UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

DIEGO 
\in  memory  of 


W.    Snvder 


by 

His  Son  and  Daughter 


THREE 


ENGLISH   STATESMEN 


A  COURSE  OF  LECTURES 


POLITICAL  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND. 


BY  GOLDWIN  SMITH. 


NEW   YORK- 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN    SQUARE. 
1867. 


TO 

THOMAS  BAYLEY  POTTER,  M.P., 

A  STAUNCH  FRIEND  OF 
HUMANITY  AND  JUSTICE  IN  THEIR  TIME  OF  NEED. 

are 


THEEE  ENGLISH  STATESMEN. 


i. 

PYM. 

LET  us  never  glorify  revolution.  Statesman- 
ship is  the  art  of  avoiding  it,  and  of  making 
progress  at  once  continuous  and  calm.  Revolu- 
tions are  not  only  full  of  all  that  a  good  citizen 
and  a  good  Christian  hates  while  they  last,  but 
they  leave  a  long  train  of  bitterness  behind. 
The  energy  and  the  exaltation  of  character 
which  they  call  forth  are  paid  for  in  the  lassi- 
tude, the  depression,  the  political  infidelity  which 
ensue.  The  great  spirits  of  the  English  Revolu- 
tion were  followed  by  the  men  of  Charles  II. 
Whatever  of  moral  grandeur  there  was  in  the 
French  Revolution  was  followed  by  Bonapartism 
and  Talleyrand.  Even  while  the  great  men  are 
on  the  scene,  violence  and  one-sidedness  mar 
their  greatness.  Let  us  pray  that  all  our  polit- 


8  Three  English  Statesmen. 

ical  contests  may  be  carried  on  as  the  contests  of 
fellow-citizen,  and  beneath  the  unassailed  majes- 
ty of  law.  But  the  chiefest  authors  of  revolu- 
tions have  been  not  the  chimerical  and  intemper- 
ate friends  of  progress,  but  the  blind  obstructers 
of  progress;  those  who,  in  defiance  of  nature, 
struggle  to  avert  the  inevitable  future,  to  recall 
the  irrevocable  past ;  who  chafe  to  fury  by  dam- 
ming up  its  course  the  river  which  would  other- 
wise flow  calmly  between  its  banks,  which  has 
ever  flowed,  and  which,  do  what  they  will,  must 
flow  forever. 

If  a  revolution  ever  was  redeemed  by  its 
grandeur,  it  was  the  revolution  which  was  open- 
ed by  Pym,  which  was  closed  by  Cromwell,  of 
which  Milton  was  the  apostle  and  the  poet. 
The  material  forces  have  been  seen  in  action  on  a 
more  imposing  scale,  the  moral  forces  never. 
Why  is  that  regard  for  principle  which  was  so 
strong  among  us  then,  comparatively  so  weak 
among  us  now  ?  The  greatest  member  of  Parlia- 
ment that  ever  lived,  the  greatest  master  of  the 
convictions  and  the  feelings  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  was  not  Robert  Peel,  but  John  Pym. 
But  if  Pym,  in  modern  garb  and  using  modern 
phrase,  could  now  rise  in  his  old  place,  his  words, 
though  as  practical  as  they  are  lofty,  would,  I 
fear,  be  thought  "  too  clever  for  the  House."  Is 


Pym.  9 

it  that  wealth,  too  much  accumulated  and  too  lit- 
tle diffused,  has  placed  the  leadership  of  the  na- 
tion in  less  noble  hands  ? 

We  must  not  regard  this  revolution  merely  as 
the  struggle  of  the  English  House  of  Commons 
against  the  tyranny  of  Charles  I.  It  was  part  of 
a  European  conflict  between  two  great  opposing 
currents  of  opinion,  one  running  toward  the  fu- 
ture, the  other  toward  the  past.  The  Reforma- 
tion, like  all  really  great  movements,  was  relig- 
ions ;  but  acting  on  the  deepest  part  of  humani- 
ty, it  impelled  forward  the  whole  nature  of  man ; 
and  the  reaction  against  it  accordingly  was  a  re- 
action of  all  the  powers  of  the  past.  In  Spain 
the  reaction,  both  political  and  ecclesiastical,  had 
triumphed  through  the  alliance  of  the  Inquisition 
and  the  kings.  In  France  the  political  reaction 
had  triumphed  through  the  policy  of  Richelieu, 
whom  some,  thinking  more  of  organization  than 
of  life,  numbered  with  the  friends  of  progress;  the 
rest  was  to  be  done  by  Louis  XIV.  In  Ger- 
many, Austria  and  the  Catholic  League  had  near- 
ly crushed  the  independence  of  the  Protestant 
states,  and  made  a  Catholic  empire  of  the  land  of 
Luther.  At  first  the  Reformation,  with  liberty 
in  its  train,  had  spread  over  all  the  nations  that 
spoke  a  Teutonic  tongue ;  it  had  spread  over  a 
great  part  of  France ;  it  had  gained  a  footing  in 

A2 


io  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Italy  and  Spain.  Now,  England  and  Holland 
seemed  to  stand  almost  alone.  It  was  a  crisis  as 
perilous  as  that  of  the  Armada.  How  natural  to 
humanity,  wearied  and  perplexed  with  change,  is 
this  yearning  for  the  thrones  and  for  the  altars 
of  the  past ! 

In  England,  however,  not  only  was  there  this 
conflict  between  the  Reformation  and  its  enemies. 
Here,  the  real  reformation  was  still  to  come. 
The  reformation  of  Henry  VIII.  was  a  royal  ref- 
ormation, which  put  the  king  in  the  place  of  "the 
pope.  The  people  were  now  to  have  their  ref- 
ormation, a  reformation  of  conviction,  which  put 
conscience  in  the  place  both  of  pope  and  king. 

I  take  for  granted  a  knowledge  of  the  reign 
of  James  I. ;  the  glories  of  Elizabeth  lighting 
up  the  shame  of  her  successor;  the  fatal  ques- 
tion whether  sovereign  power  resided  with  the 
king  or  with  the  parliament,  kept  undecided  by 
her  tact,  forced  to  decision  by  his  folly ;  the 
weaknesses  of  a  sovereign  who  seemed  born  to 
advance  constitutional  liberty  by  provoking  re- 
sistance which  he  could  not  quell,  and  proclaim- 
ing principles  of  absolutism  which  he  could  not 
sustain;  the  close  alliance  between  prerogative 
and  the  priest  party,  the  king  insulting  the 
Puritan  divines  at  the  Hampton  ^Court  confer, 
ence,  and  the  bishops  prostrate  in  grateful  ecsta- 


Pym.  ii 

sies  at  Ms  feet;  the  government  of  favorites, 
whose  names  were  by-words  of  infamy ;  the  ju- 
dicial murder  of  Raleigh  ;  the  disgrace  of  Chief- 
Justice  Coke,  and  of  the  common  law  in  his  per- 
son ;  the  divorce  of  Essex ;  the  murder  of  Over- 
bury  ;  the  mysterious  threats  by  which  the  mur- 
derers appealed  not  in  vain  to  the  guilty  con- 
science of  the  king ;  the  uprising  of  the  Com- 
mons ;  the  Protestation  of  Right ;  the  storm  of 
national  resentment  to  which  the  court  sacrificed 
Bacon — Bacon,  who  served  darkness  in  the  hope 
that  when  he  had  raised  himself  to  power  his 
science  would  make  the  darkness  light,  the  dupe 
of  a  dream  of  beneficent  despotism,  a  warning  to 
fastidious  minds  if  they  would  work  for  the  peo- 
ple to  work  with  and  by  the  people. 

I  take  for  granted,  too,  a  knowledge  of  the 
early  part  of  the  life  and  reign  of  Charles :  the 
ominous  episode  of  the  Spanish  match ;  the 
scenes  of  duplicity  which  followed,  already  re- 
vealing the  dark  spot  in  Charles's  character ;  the 
ascendancy  of  Buckingham,  safely  intrenched  in 
favor,  more  safely  than  ever  Stratford  was,  be- 
cause his  mind  was  not  above  that  of  his  master ; 
the  coronation,  in  which  the  bishops  and  their 
paraphernalia  played  so  conspicuous  a  part;  the 
brief  honey-moon  of  the  new  king  and  his  parlia- 
ment; the  renewal  of  the  struggle;  Charles's 


12  Three  English  Statesmen. 

policy  oscillating  between  government  by  Parlia- 
ment and  government  by  prerogative,  and  both 
ways  fatally  to  himself;  his  foreign  policy  oscil- 
lating between  the  support  of  Protestant  free- 
dom, for  which  the  nation  called,  and  the  support 
of  Catholic  absolutism,  toward  which  his  own 
heart  yearned ;  the  French  queen,  with  her 
French  notions  of  what  a  king  and  a  queen 
should  be;  the  beginnings  of  arbitrary  taxation 
and  military  rule ;  the  "  great,  warm,  and  ruffling 
parliament,"  as  Whitelocke  calls  it,  by  which 
those  encroachments  were  withstood ;  the  Peti- 
tion of  Right,  that  complement  of  the  Great 
Charter,  which  declares  that  Englishmen  shall 
never  be  subject  to  martial  law,  and  which  if  it 
be  tampered  with  in  our  day,  though  it  be  in  the 
person  of  the  humblest  English  subject,  we  pur- 
pose, after  the  example  of  our  great  forefathers, 
to  make  good. 

At  last  Charles  broke  with  his  parliament, 
passionately  dissolved  it  amid  a  scene^  of  tem- 
pestuous violence  (the  speaker  being  held  -down 
in  his  chair  till  the  protest  of  the  Commons  had 
been  made),  and  by  proclamation  forbade  any 
man  to  talk  of  a  parliament  being  ever  held 
again.  The  leader  of  the  Commons,  Sir  John 
Eliot,  was  thrown  into  the  Tower.  There  he 
sank  at  last  beneath  the  bad  air  and  the  chills  of 


Pym.  13 

his  prison-house,  constantly  refusing,  as  a  cham- 
pion of  the  law,  to  do  homage  to  lawlessness  by 
submission.  "  My  lodgings  are  removed,  and  I 
am  now  where  candle-light  may  be  suffered,  but 
scarce  fire."  So  he  writes  when  he  is  dying  of 
consumption.  The  court  knew  what  they  were 
doing.  "  I  must  tell  you,"  writes  Lord  Cotting- 
ton  to  the  renegade  Strafford,  "that  your  old, 
dear  friend  Sir  John  Eliot  is  very  like  to  die." 
His  family  petitioned  for  leave  to  bury  him 
among  his  fathers  in  his  Cornish  home.  The 
king  wrote  at  the  foot  of  the  petition,  "  Let  Sir 
John  Eliot's  body  be  buried  in  the  church  of 
that  parish  where  he  died."  But  Sir  John 
Eliot's  spirit  rose  in  the  king's  path  in  a  decisive 
hour. 

Then  followed  eleven  years  of  government  by 
prerogative — in  place  of  Parliament,  the  triune 
despotism  of  the  Privy  Council,  the  Star  Cham- 
ber, the  Court  of  High  Commission ;  in  place  of 
laws,  proclamations ;  in  place  of  courts  of  law, 
courts  of  arbitrary  power ;  in  place  of  legal  taxa- 
tion by  Parliament,  forced  loans,  monopolies, 
feudal  and  forest  extortions,  ship-money ;  the  ten- 
ure of  the  judges  made  during  the  king's  pleas- 
ure, that  they  might  be  perfect  slaves  to  the 
king's  will ;  the  tamperings  with  the  bench,  by 
which  old  Judge  Whitelocke  warned  Laud  he 


14  Three  English  Statesmen. 

would  in  the  end  raise  a  flame  in  the  nation ;  the 
"  Book  of  Sports"  put  forth  not  only  to  do  de- 
spite to  the  Puritan  Sabbath,  but  to  make  a  mer- 
ry England,  free  from  political  thought;  the 
Protestant  cause  abroad  openly  abandoned ;  the 
strength  of  the  nation  declining  as  the  power  of 
the  crown  rose,  and  Barbary  pirates  riding  tri- 
umphant in  the  Channel;  Strafford  and  Laud 
with  their  policy  of  Thorough;  Laud,  Primate 
and  Chancellor,  extirpating  freedom  of  thought 
in  England ;  Strafford,  lord  deputy  of  Ireland, 
making  ready  there  an  army  for  the  completion 
of  the  joint  work,  and  reading  us  two  lessons 
which  from  so  able  an  enemy  w^shall  do  well  to 
learn;  first,  that  a  standing  army  is  a  standing 
menace  to  public  liberty ;  and,  secondly,  that  ar- 
bitrary government  in  a  dependency  is  the  step- 
ping-stone to  arbitrary  government  at  home. 
Hopelessly  as  it  seemed  at  the  time,  Hampden 
withstood  ship-money:  he  was  cast  in  his  suit 
before  a  servile  and  unjust  court,  but  he  proved 
that  in  a  righteous  cause  a  defeat  before  an  un- 
just court  may  be  a  victory  before  the  people. 

With  tyranny  in  the  State,  tyranny  in  the 
Church  went  hand  in  hand.  Intimate  is  the  con- 
nection between  political  freedom  and  freedom 
of  the  soul ;  eternal  is  the  alliance  of  the  Lauds 
and  the  Straffords  against  both.  Reaction  in  the 


Pym.  1 5 

State  and  reaction  in  the  Church,  a  Romanizing 
clergy,  and  a  government  tending  to  martial  law, 
these  are  the  joint  characteristics  not  of  one  age 
alone.  The  dry  bones  of  the  Tudor  episcopate 
had  now  begun  to  live  with  a  portentous  life  of 
priestly  ambition,  the  source  of  which  was  Rome, 
and  which  soon  sought  union  with  its  source. 
To  unprotestantize  the  Church  of  England,  Laud 
labored  with  canons  and  ordinances,  with  books 
and  sermons,  with  preferments  for  the  compliant, 
with  whips,  pillories,  and  banishment  for  recu- 
sants, at  a  rate  which  happily  for  us  left  prudence 
as  well  as  charity  and  humanity  behind.  Prot- 
estant preachers  were  driven  from  their  pulpits, 
harried  out  of  the  kingdom — among  them  the 
favorite  preacher  of  an  obscure  sectary  named 
Cromwell.  The  altar  was  set  up  again  in  place 
of  the  communion  table.  The  eucharistic  miracle, 
the  talisman  of  priestly  power,  was  again  per- 
formed. Clerical  celibacy,  monachism,  the  confes- 
sional, were  coming  in  due  course.  Persons  of 
quality  especially  embraced  a  religion  of  flowers 
and  incense,  of  millineries  and  upholsteries,  of  in- 
sinuating directors.  Only  some  spirits,  too  impa- 
tient and  too  logical,  could  not  be  kept  from  cut- 
ting short  the  process  and  going  at  once  to 
Rome.  The  Protestant  refugee  churches  in  En- 
gland were  crushed ;  it  seems  their  members 


1 6  Three  English  Statesmen. 

kept  some  trade  secrets  to  themselves,  and  did 
not  contribute  so  much  as  was  to  be  desired  to 
the  wealth  of  the  kingdom.  The  communion  of 
the  Protestant  churches  abroad,  which  Hooker 
had  acknowledged,  was  renounced,  because  hav- 
ing no  bishops  they  could  not  be  Christian  ;  and 
this  no  doubt  was  called  the  reunion  of  Christen- 
dom. To  all  this  the  hearty  support  of  the 
Court  was  given,  and  it  was  well  earned.  The 
High  Church  clergy  preached  the  Loan  as  vigor- 
ously as  the  Real  Presence  or  the  Apostolical 
Succession.  The  court  divine,  Manwaring,  said 
in  one  of  his  famous  sermons,  "  that  the  first  of 
all  relations  was  that  between  the  Creator  and 
the  creature ;  the  next  between  husband  and 
wife ;  the  third  between  parent  and  child ;  the 
fourth  between  lord  and  servant ;  and  that  from 
all  these  arose  that  most  high,  sacred,  and  tran- 
scendent relation  between  king  and  subject."  In 
another  passage  he  asks  himself  "  Why  religion 
doth  associate  God  and  the  king?"  and  he  answers, 
"  that  it  may  be  for  one  of  three  reasons ;  be- 
cause in  Scripture  the  name  of  god  is  given  to  an- 
gels, priests,  and  kings ;  or  from  the  propinquity 
of  offenses  against  God  and  his  anointed  king; 
or  from  the  parity  of  beneficence  which  men  en- 
joy from  sacred  kings,  and  which  they  can  no 
more  requite  in  the  case  of  the  king  than  in  the 


Pym.  17 

case  of  God."  He  reasons,  "  that  as  justice,  proper- 
ly so  called,  intercedes  not  between  God  and 
man,  nor  between  the  prince,  being  the  father, 
and  the  people  as  children  (for  justice  is  between 
equals),  so  can  not  justice  be  any  rule  or  medium 
whereby  to  give  God  or  the  king  his  right." 
And  again,  he  draws  a  comparison  between  the 
dignity  of  angels  and  that  of  kings  from  which  it 
is  plain  that  bishoprics  are  not  in  the  gift  of  the 
angels.  This  in  the  Chapel  Eoyal,  where,  as 
Pym  said,  that  doctrine  was  already  so  well  be- 
lieved that  no  man  needed  to  be  converted. 
Manwaring,  Sibthorpe,  and  Montagu  belong  as 
yet  not  wholly  to  the  past ;  but  the  members  of 
the  Church  of  England  have  the  happiness  of 
knowing  that  there  are  some  at  least  among  her 
clergy  in  high  places  who  labor,  and  labor  suc- 
cessfully, to  lay  her  foundations  not  in  political 
power  but  in  the  free  affection  of  the  people ;  to 
present  her  as  the  friend  and  the  consecrator,  not 
as  the  enemy,  of  human  progress ;  and  to  ally  her 
not  with  injustice  but  with  justice. 

When  Charles  dismissed  his  parliament,  the 
day  was  going  hard  with  the  Protestant  cause  in 
Germany,  the  great  scene  of  the  conflict,  to  which 
the  eyes  of  all  Protestants  were  wistfully  and 
sadly  turned.  Tilly  and  Wallenstein  were  carry- 
ing all  before  them  ;  and  the  last  hope  of  Protest- 


1 8  Three  English  Statesmen. 

antism  seemed  to  expire  when  the  King  of  Den- 
mark was  overthrown.  Suddenly  a  light  shone 
in  the  north.  Gustavus  Adolphus  appeared 
upon  the  scene.  Leipsic,  the  Gettysburg  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  was  fought ;  and  the  tidings 
of  a  great  deliverance  and  the  name  of  a  great 
deliverer  made  the  heart  of  the  oppressed  to 
leap  for  joy,  and  loosened  the  knees  of  the  op- 
pressor. English  and  Scottish  soldiers  of  Gusta- 
TUS,  the  Garibaldians  of  their  day,  came  back,  not 
a  few  to  England,  many  to  Scotland,  with  Gari- 
baldian  memories  and  sentiments  in  their  hearts. 

Then  Laud  laid  his  rash  hand  upon  the  relig- 
ious independence  of  Scotland ;  and  the  Scotch 
nation,  nobles  and  commons,  ministers  and  peo- 
ple, wonderfully  fused  together  by  fiery  enthusi- 
asm, poured  like  a  lava  torrent  on  the  aggressor. 
English  sympathies  fought  on  the  Scottish  side ; 
English  soldiers  refused  to  conquer  for  Laud. 
Stratford's  Irish  army  was  not  ready.  Govern- 
ment by  prerogative  fell,  and  Charles  called  a 
parliament. 

After  eleven  years  without  parliaments,  most 
of  the  members  were  new.  But  they  had  not  to 
seek  a  leader.  They  had  one  whom  all  accepted 
in  John  Pym.  Pyni  had  been  second  only  to 
Sir  John  Eliot  as  a  leader  of  the  patriot  party  in 
the  reign  of  James.  He  was  one  of  the  twelve 


Pym.  19 

deputies  of  the  Commons  when  James  cried, 
with  insight  as  well  as  spleen,  "  Set  twal  chairs ; 
here  be  twal  kings  coming."  He  had  stood 
among  the  foremost  of  those  "  evil-tempered  spir- 
its" who  protested  that  the  liberties  of  Parliament 
were  not  the  favors  of  the  crown,  but  the  birth- 
right of  Englishmen,  and  who  for  so  doing  were 
imprisoned  without  law.  He  had  resolved,  as  he 
said,  that  he  would  rather  suffer  for  speaking 
the  truth,  than  the  truth  should  suffer  for 
want  of  his  speaking.  His  greatness  had  in- 
creased in  the  struggle  against  Charles  I.  He 
had  been  one  of  the  chief  managers  of  the  im- 
peachment of  Buckingham  ;  and  for  that  service 
to  public  justice,  he  had  again  suffered  a  glorious 
imprisonment.  He  had  accused  Manwaring ;  he 
had  raised  a  voice  of  power  against  the  Roman- 
izing intrigues  of  Laud.  In  those  days,  he  and 
Strafford  were  dear  friends,  and  fellow -soldiers 
in  the  same  cause.  But  when  the  death  of  Buck- 
ingham left  the  place  of  First  Minister  vacant, 
Strafford  sought  an  interview  with  Pym  at 
Greenwich ;  and  when  they  met  began  to  talk 
against  dangerous  courses,  and  to  hint  at  advanta- 
geous overtures  to  be  made  by  the  court.  Pym  cut 
him  short:  "You  need  not  use  all  this  art  to  tell  me 
that  you  have  a  mind  to  leave  us.  But  remember 
what  I  tell  you — you  are  going  to  be  undone. 


2O  7Yiree  English  Statesmen. 

And  remember  also,  that  though  you  leave  us,  I 
will  never  leave  you  while  your  head  is  upon 
your  shoulders  !"  Such  at  least  was  the  story 
current  in  the  succeeding  age  of  the  last  inter- 
view between  the  Great  Champion  of  Freedom 
and  the  Great  Apostate. 

Pym  was  a  Somersetshire  gentleman  of  good 
family ;  and  it  was  from  good  families — such  fam- 
ilies at  least  as  do  not  produce  Jacobins — that 
most  of  the  leaders  of  this  revolution  sprang.  I 
note  it,  not  to  claim  for  principle  the  patronage 
of  birth  and  wealth,  but  to  show  how  strong  that 
principle  must  have  been  which  could  thus  move 
birth  and  wealth  away  from  their  natural  bias. 
It  is  still  true,  not  in  the  ascetic,  but  in  the  moral 
sense,  that  it  is  hard  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  heaven ;  and  when  we  see  rich 
men  entering  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  hazard- 
ing the  enjoyment  of  wealth  for  the  sake  of  prin- 
ciple, we  may  know  that  it  is  no  common  age. 
Oxford  was  the  place  of  Pym's  education,  and 
there  he  was  distinguished  not  only  by  solid  ac- 
quirements, but  by  elegant  accomplishments,  so 
that  an  Oxford  poet  calls  him  the  favorite  of 
Apollo.  High  culture  is  now  rather  in  disgrace 
in  some  quarters,  and  not  without  a  color  of  rea- 
son, as  unbracing  the  sinews  of  action  and  de- 
stroying sympathy  with  the  people.  Neverthe- 


Pym.  21 

less,  the  universities  produced  the  great  states- 
men and  the  great  warriors  of  the  Commonwealth. 
If  the  Oxford  of  Pym,  of  Hampden,  and  of  Blake, 
the  Oxford  of  "Wycliffe,  the  Oxford  where  in  still 
earlier  times  those  principles  were  nursed  which 
gave  us  the  Great  Charter  and  the  House  of 
Commons — if  this  Oxford,  I  say,  now  seems  by 
her  political  bearing  to  dishonor  learning,  and  by 
an  ignoble  choice  does  a  wrong  to  the  nation 
which  Lancashire  is  called  upon  to  redress — be- 
lieve me,  it  is  not  the  University  which  thus  of- 
fends, but  a  power  alien  to  the  University  and 
alien  to  learning,  to  which  the  University  is,  and, 
unless  you  rescue  her,  will  continue  to  be,  a  slave. 

It  is  another  point  of  difference  between  the 
English  and  the  French  revolutions  that  the 
leaders  of  the  English  Revolution  were  as  a  rule 
good  husbands  and  fathers,  in  whom  domestic  af- 
fection was  the  root  of  public  virtue.  Pym, 
after  being  for  some  time  in  public  life,  married, 
and  after  his  marriage  lived  six  years  in  retire- 
ment— a  part  of  training  as  necessary  as  action 
to  the  depth  of  character  and  the  power  of  sus- 
tained thought  which  are  the  elements  of  great- 
ness. At  the  end  of  the  six  years  his  wife  died, 
and  he  took  no  other  wife  but  his  country. 

There  were  many  elements  in.  the  patriot  par- 
ty, united  at  first,  afterward  severed  from  each 


22  Three  English  Statesmen. 

other  by  the  fierce  winnowiug-fan  of  the  struggle, 
and  marking  by  their  successive  ascendancy  the 
changing  phases  of  the  revolution  :  Constitution- 
al Monarchists,  aristocratic  Republicans,  Repub- 
licans thorough-going,  Protestant  Episcopalians, 
Presbyterians,  Independents,  and  in  the  abyss  be- 
neath them  all  the  Anabaptists,  the  Fifth  Mon- 
archy men,  and  the  Levellers.  Pym  was  a  friend 
of  constitutional  monarchy  in  politics,  a  Protest- 
ant Episcopalian  in  religion ;  against  a  despot, 
but  for  a  king;  against  the  tyranny  and  political 
power  of  the  bishops,  but  satisfied  with  that 
form  of  church  government.  He  was  no  fanatic, 
and  no  ascetic.  He  was  genial,  social,  even  con- 
vivial. His  enemies  held  him  up  to  the  hatred 
of  the  sectaries  as  a  man  of  pleasure.  As  the 
statesman  and  orator  of  the  less  extreme  party, 
and  of  the  first  period  of  the  revolution,  he  is  the 
English  counterpart  of  Mirabeau,  so  far  as  a  Chris- 
tian patriot  can  be  the  counterpart  of  a  Voltairean 
debauchee. 

Nor  is  he  altogether  unlike  Mirabeau  in  the 
style  of  his  eloquence,  our  better  appreciation  of 
which,  as  well  as  our  better  knowledge  of  Pym 
and  of  this  the  heroic  age  of  our  history  in  gener- 
al, we  owe  to  the  patriotic  and  truly  noble  dili- 
gence of  Mr.  John  Forster,  from  whose  researches 
no  small  portion  of  my  materials  for  this  lecture 


Pym.  23 

is  derived.  Pym's  speeches  of  course  are  seven- 
teenth-century speeches ;  stately  in  diction,  some- 
what like  homilies  in  their  divisions,  full  of 
learning,  full  of  Scripture  (which  then,  be  it  re- 
membered, was  a  fresh  spring  of  new  thought),  full 
of  philosophic  passages  which  might  have  come 
from  the  pen  of  Hooker  or  of  Bacon.  But  they 
sometimes  strike  the  great  strokes  for  which 
Mirabeau  was  famous.  Buckingham  had  plead- 
ed to  the  charge  of  enriching  himself  by  the  sale 
of  honors  and  offices,  that  so  far  from  having  en- 
riched himself  he  was  .£100,000  in  debt.  "  If  this 
be  true,"  replied  Pym,  "  how  can  we  hope  to  sat- 
isfy his  immense  prodigality;  if  false,  how  can 
we  hope  to  satisfy  his  covetousness  ?"  In  the 
debate  on  the  Petition  of  Right,  when  Secretary 
Cooke  desired  in  the  name  of  the  king  to  know 
whether  they  would  take  the  king's  word  for 
the  observance  of  their  liberties  or  not,  "  there 
was  silence  for  a  good  space,"  none  liking  to  re- 
ject the  king's  word,  all  knowing  what  that  word 
was  worth.  The  silence  was  broken  by  Pym, 
who  rose  and  said, "  We  have  his  majesty's  coro- 
nation oath  to  maintain  the  laws  of  England; 
what  need  we  then  to  take  his  word  ?"  And 
the  secretary  desperately  pressing  his  point,  and 
asking  what  foreigners  would  think  if  the  people 
of  England  refused  to  trust  their  king's  word, 


24  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Pym  rejoined,  "  Truly,  Mr.  Secretary,  I  am  of  the 
same  opinion  that  I  was,  that  the  king's  oath  is 
as  powerful  as  his  word."  In  the  same  debate 
the  courtiers  prayed  the  House  to  leave  entire 
his  majesty's  sovereign  power — a  Stuart  phrase, 
meaning  the  power  of  the  king  when  he  deemed 
it  expedient  to  break  the  law.  "  I  am  not  able," 
was  Pym's  reply,  "  to  speak  to  this  question.  I 
know  not  what  it  is.  All  our  petition  is  for  the 
laws  of  England ;  and  this  power  seems  to  be 
another  power  distinct  from  the  power  of  the 
law.  I  know  how  to  add  sovereign  to  the  king's 
person,  but  not  to  his  power.  We  can  not  leave 
to  him  a  sovereign  power,  for  we  never  were  pos- 
sessed of  it." 

The  English  Revolution  was  a  revolution  of 
principle,  but  of  principle  couched  in  precedent. 
What  the  philosophic  salon  was  to  the  French 
leaders  of  opinion,  that  the  historical  and  anti- 
quarian library  of  Sir  Robert  Cotton  was  to  the 
English.  And  of  the  group  of  illustrious  men 
who  gathered  in  that  library,  none  had  been  a 
deeper  student  of  its  treasures  than  Pym.  His 
speeches  and  state  papers  are  the  proof. 

When  the  parliament  had  met,  Pym  was  the 
first  to  rise.  We  know  his  appearance  from  his 
portrait — a  portly  form,  which  a  court  waiting- 
woman  called  that  of  an  ox ;  a  forehead  so  high 


Pym.  25 

that  lampooners  compared  it  to  a  shuttle ;  the 
dress  of  a  gentleman  of  the  time :  for  not  to  the 
cavaliers  alone  belonged  that  picturesque  cos- 
tume and  those  pointed  beards,  which  furnish  the 
real  explanation  of  the  fact  that  all  women  are 
Tories.  Into  the  expectant  and  wavering,  though 
ardent,  minds  of  the  inexperienced  assembly  he 
poured,  with  the  authority  of  a  veteran  chief,  a 
speech  which  at  once  fixed  their  thoughts,  and 
possessed  them  with  their  mission.  It  was  a 
broad,  complete,  and  earnest,  though  undeclama- 
tory,  statement  of  the  abuses  which  they  had 
come  to  reform.  For  reform,  though  for  root- 
and-branch  reform,  not  for  revolution,  the  Short 
Parliament  came :  and  Charles  might  even  now 
have  made  his  peace  with  his  people.  But 
Charles  did  not  yet  see  the  truth :  the  truth 
could  never  pierce  through  the  divinity  that 
hedged  round  the  king.  The  Commons  insisted 
that  redress  of  grievances  should  go  before  sup- 
ply. In  a  moment  of  madness,  or  what  is  the 
same  thing,  of  compliance  with  the  counsels  of 
Laud,  Charles  dissolved  the  parliament,  imprison- 
ed several  of  its  members,  and  published  his  rea- 
sons in  a  proclamation  full  of  despotic  doctrine. 
The  friends  of  the  crown  were  sad,  its  enemies 
very  joyful.  Now,  to  the  eye  of  history,  begins 

to  rise  that  scaffold  before  Whitehall. 

B 


26  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Once  more  Charles  and  Strafford  tried  their 
desperate  arms  against  the  Scotch;  and  once 
more  their  soldiers  refused  to  fight.  Pym  and 
Hampden,  meanwhile,  sure  of  the  issue,  were 
preparing  their  party  and  the  nation  for  the  de- 
cisive struggle.  Their  head-quarters  were  at 
Pym's  house,  in  Gray's  Inn  Lane ;  but  meetings 
were  held  also  at  the  houses  of  leaders  in  the 
country,  especially  for  correspondence  with  the 
Scotch,  with  whom  these  patriot  traitors  were 
undoubtedly  in  league.  A  private  press  was 
actively  at  work.  Pym  was  not  only  the  orator 
of  his  party,  but  its  soul  and  centre ;  he  knew 
how  not  only  to  propagate  his  opinions  with 
words  of  power,  but  to  organize  the  means  of 
victory.  And  now  Charles,  in  extremity,  turned 
to  the  middle  ages  "for  one  expedient  more,  and 
called  a  Great  Council  of  Peers,  according  to 
Plantagenet  precedents,  at  York.  Pym  flew  at 
once  to  York,  caused  a  petition  for  a  parliament 
to  be  signed  by  the  peers  of  his  party  there,  and 
backed  it  with  petitions  from  the  people,  one  of 
them  signed  by  10,000  citizens  of  London.  This 
first  great  wielder  of  public  opinion  in  England 
was  the  inventor  of  organized  agitation  by  peti- 
tion. The  king  surrendered,  and  called  a  parlia- 
ment. Pym  and  Hampden  rode  over  the  coun- 
try, urging  the  constituencies  to  do  their  duty. 


Pym.  27 

The  constituencies  did  their  duty,  as  perhaps  they 
had  never  done  it  before,  and  have  never  done  it 
since.  They  sent  up  the  noblest  body  of  men 
that  ever  sat  in  the  councils  of  a  nation.  The 
force  of  the  agitation  triumphed  for  the  moment, 
as  it  did  again  in  1830,  over  all  those  defects  in 
the  system  of  representation  which  prevail  over 
the  public  interest  and  the  public  sentiment  in 
ordinary  times.  The  Long  Parliament  met, 
while  round  it  the  tide  of  national  feeling  swell- 
ed and  surged,  the  long-pent-up  voices  of  na- 
tional resentment  broke  forth.  It  met  not  for  re- 
form, but  for  revolution.  The  king  did  not  ride 
to  it  in  state ;  he  slunk  to  it  in  his  private  barge, 
like  a  vanquished  and  a  doomed  man. 

Charles  had  called  to  him  Strafford.  The  earl 
knew  his  danger ;  but  the  ting  had  pledged  to 
him  the  royal  word  that  not  a  hair  of  his  head 
should  be  touched.  He  came  foiled,  broken  by 
disease,  but  still  resolute,  prepared  to  act  on  the 
aggressive,  perhaps  to  arraign  the  leaders  of  the 
Commons  for  treasonable  correspondence  with 
the  Scotch.  But  he  had  to  deal,  in  his  friend 
and  coadjutor  of  former  days,  with  no  mere 
rhetorician,  but  with  a  man  of  action  as  saga- 
cious and  as  intrepid  as  himself.  Pym  at  once 
struck  a  blow  which  proved  him  a  master  of 
revolution.  Announcing  to  the  Commons  that 


28  Three  English  Statesmen. 

lie  had  weighty  matter  to  impart,  he  moved  that 
the  doors  should  be  closed.  "When  they  were 
opened,  he  earned  up  to  the  Lords  the  impeach- 
ment of  the  Earl  of  Strafford.  The  earl  came 
down  to  the  House  of  Lords  that  day  with  his 
brow  of  imperial  gloom,  his  impetuous  step,  his 
tones  and  gestures  of  command:  but  scarcely 
had  he  entered  the  house  when  he  found  that 
power  had  departed  from  him ;  and  the  terrible 
grand  vizier  of  government  by  prerogative  went 
away  a  fallen  man,  none  unbonneting  to  him,  in 
whose  presence  an  hour  before  no  man  would 
have  stood  covered.  The  speech  by  which  Pyni 
swept  the  house  on  to  this  bold  move,  so  that,  as 
Clarendon  says,  "  not  one  man  was  found  to  stop 
the  torrent,"  is  known  only  from  Clarendon's  out- 
line. But  that  outline  shows  how  the  speaker 
filled  the  thoughts  of  his  hearers  with  a  picture 
of  the  tyranny,  before  he  named  its  chief  author, 
the  Earl  of  Strafford  ;  and  how  he  blended  with 
the  elements  of  indignation  some  lighter  pas- 
sages of  the  earl's  vanity  and  amours,  to  mingle 
indignation  with  contempt  and  to  banish  fear. 

Through  the  report  of  the  Scotch  Commission- 
er Baillie  we  see  the  great  trial,  to  which  that 
of  Warren  Hastings  was  a  parallel  in  splendor, 
but  no  parallel  in  interest — Westminster  Hall 
filled  with  the  Peers,  the  Commons,  the  foreign 


Pym.  29 

nobility,  come  to  learn  if  they  could  a  lesson  in 
English  politics — the  ladies  of  quality,  whose 
hearts  (and  we  can  pardon  them)  were  all  with 
the  great  criminal  who  made  so  gallant  and  skill- 
ful a  fight  for  life,  and  of  whom  it  was  said  that, 
like  Ulysses,  he  had  not  beauty,  but  he  had  the 
eloquence  which  moved  a  goddess  to  love. 
Among  the  mass  of  the  audience  the  interest,  in- 
tense at  first,  flagged  as  the  immense  process 
went  on ;  and  eating,  drinking,  loud  talking  filled 
the  intervals  of  the  trial.  But  there  was  one 
whose  interest  did  not  flag.  The  royal  throne 

O  »/ 

was  set  for  the  king  in  his  place ;  but  the  king 
was  not  there.  He  was  with  his  queen  in  a  pri- 
vate gallery,  the  lattice-work  of  which,  in  his 
eagerness  to  hear,  he  broke  through  with  his 
own  hands.  And  there  he  heard,  among  other 
things,  these  words  of  Pym :  "  If  the  histories  of 
eastern  countries  be  pursued,  whose  princes  order 
their  affairs  according  to  the  mischievous  princi- 
ples of  the  Earl  of  Strafford,  loose  and  absolved 
from  all  rules  of  government,  they  will  be  found 
to  be  frequent  in  combustions,  full  of  massacres 
and  of  the  tragical  ends  of  princes." 

I  need  not  make  selections  from  a  speech  so 
well  known  as  that  of  Pym  on  the  trial  of  Straf. 
ford.  But  hear  one  or  two  answers  to  fallacies 
which  are  not  quite  dead  yet.  To  the  charge  of 


30  Three  English  Statesmen. 

arbitrary  government  in  Ireland,  Strafford  Lad 
pleaded  that  the  Irish  were  a  conquered  nation. 
"  They  were  a  conquered  nation,"  cries  Pym. 
"  There  can  not  be  a  word  more  pregnant  or  fruit- 
ful in  treason  than  that  word  is.  There  are  few 
nations  in  the  world  that  have  not  been  conquer- 
ed, and  no  doubt  but  the  conqueror  may  give 
what  law  he  pleases  to  those  that  are  conquered ; 
but  if  the  succeeding  pacts  and  agreements  do 
not  limit  and  restrain  that  right,  what  people  can 
be  secure  ?  England  Lath  been  conquered,  and 
Wales  hath  been  conquered;  and  by  this  reason 
will  be  in  little  better  case  than  Ireland.  If  the 
king  by  the  right  of  a  conqueror  gives  laws  to 
his  people,  shall  not  the  people,  by  the  same  rea- 
son, be  restored  to  the  right  of  the  conquered  to 
recover  their  liberty  if  they  can  ?"  Strafford  had 
alleged  good  intentions  as  an  excuse  for  his  evil 
counsels.  "  Sometimes,  my  lords,"  says  Pym, 
"  good  and  evil,  truth  and  falsehood,  lie  so  near 
together  that  they  are  hard  to  be  distinguished. 
Matters  hurtful  and  dangerous  may  be  accom- 
panied with  such  circumstances  as  may  make 
them  appear  useful  and  convenient.  But  where 
the  matters  propounded  are  evil  in  their  own  na- 
ture, such  as  the  matters  are  wherewith  the  Earl 
of  Strafford  is  charged,  as  to  break  public  faith 
and  to  subvert  laws  and  government,  they  can 


Pym.  31 

never  be  justified  by  any  intentions,  how  good 
soever  they  be  pretended."  Again,  to  the  plea  that 
it  was  a  time  of  great  danger  and  necessity,  Pym 
replies :  "  If  there  were  any  necessity,  it  was  of 
his  own  making ;  he,  by  his  evil  counsel,  had 
brought  the  king  into  a  necessity;  and  by  no 
rules  of  justice  can  be  allowed  to  gain  this  ad- 
vantage by  his  own  fault,  as  to  make  that  a 
ground  of  his  justification  which  is  a  great  part 
of  his  offense. 

Once,  we  are  told,  while  Pym  was  speak- 
ing, his  eyes  met  those  of  Strafford,  and  the 
speaker  grew  confused,  lost  the  thread  of  his 
discourse,  broke  down  beneath  the  haggard 
glance  of  his  old  friend.  Let  us  never  glorify 
revolution ! 

It  is  commonly  said  that  Pym  and  Hampden, 
finding  that  the  evidence  for  the  impeachment 
had  failed,  made  short  work  with  their  victim  by 
an  Act  of  Attainder.  Mr.  Forster  has  discovered 
proof  that  Pym  and  Harnpden  were  personally 
against  resorting  to  an  Act  of  Attainder,  and  in 
favor  of  praying  judgment  on  the  evidence  in  the 
regular  way;  but  the  opinion  of  the  majority 
being  opposed  to  theirs,  they  went  with  the  rest. 
Guilty  of  treason  against  the  king  Strafford  was 
not,  for  the  king  was  his  accomplice.  But  he  was 
guilty,  and  he  stood  and  stands  clearly  convicted 


32  Three  English  Statesmen. 

of  that  which  Pym  charged  him — treason  against 
the  nation.  Pie  had  "  endeavored  by  his  words, 
actions,  and  counsels,  to  subvert  the  fundamental 
laws  of  England  and  Ireland,  and  to  introduce  an 
arbitrary  and  tyrannical  government."  The  Act 
of  Attainder  was  not  in  those  days  what  it  would 
be  in  ours,  an  instrument  of  which  no  just  man 
would  make  use  against  the  worst  and  most 
dangerous  of  criminals.  It  had  a  place  in  juris- 
prudence, and  would  have  been  used  on  the  like 
occasion  as  freely  by  one  party  as  by  the  other. 
In  this  case  the  process  had  been  perfectly  judi- 
cial, and  the  Act  of  Attainder  did  no  more  than 
punish  treason  against  the  nation,  as  the  Statute 
of  Treasons  would  have  punished  treason  against 
the  king.  "  Shall  it  be  treason,"  asked  Pym,  al- 
luding to  that  statute,  "  to  embase  the  king's  coin, 
though  but  a  piece  of  twelvepence  or  sixpence ; 
and  must  it  not  needs  be  the  effect  of  a  greater 
treason  to  embase  the  spirit  of  his  subjects,  and  to 
set  a  stamp  and  character  of  servitude  on  them, 
whereby  they  shall  be  disabled  to  do  any  thing 
for  the  service  of  the  king  and  the  common- 
wealth?" And  he  justly  reasoned  that  laws 
would  be  vain  if  they  had  not  a  power  to  pre- 
serve themselves,  if  any  aspirant  to  arbitrary 
power  might  with  impunity  compass  their  sub- 
version. Falkland  voted  for  the  Act  of  Attain- 


Pym.  33 

der,  and  Falkland  would  not  have  voted  for  legis- 
lative murder. 

The  Lords  hesitated ;  left  to  themselves  they 
would  have  shrunk  from  convicting  on  a  capital 
charge.  But  the  popular  clamor  was  loud  and 
terrible.  The  Lords  showed  what  in  them  is 
called  tact,  and  the  Bill  of  Attainder  passed. 

The  king  had  pledged  his  word  that  not  a  hair 
of  Stratford's  head  should  be  harmed ;  and  to  a 
chivalrous  mind  the  release  which  Strafford  sent 
him  would  have  made  the  pledge  doubly  strong. 
But  the  king  had  casuists  about  him,  and  the 
queen  hated  Strafford  as  the  rival  of  her  power, 
though  she  allowed  that  he  had  fine  hands.  Be- 
fore the  trial,  Charles  had  attempted  to  save  his 
minister  by  making  overtures  to  the  leaders  of 
the  opposition,  which,  as  they  would  have  come 
in  as  a  party  on  their  own  principles  and  with 
full  securities,  they  were  not  only  entitled  but 
bound  as  an  opposition  to  accept.  But  the  ne- 
gotiation was  broken  off  by  Bedford's  death. 
Charles  still  tried  influence  and  entreaty.  But 
the  discovery  of  the  queen's  plot  (for  hers  it 
probably  was),  to  bring  up  the  army  and  over- 
awe the  parliament,  sealed  Strafford's  doom. 
And  so  that  promise  made  in  the  conference  at 
Greenwich  was  kept  to  the  letter.  Better  had  it 

not  been  so.     Better  to  have  been  satisfied  with 

B2 


34  Three  English  Statesmen. 

establishing  the  principle  that  treason  against  the 
nation  was  as  high  a  crime  as  treason  against  the 
king,  and  then  to  have  exalted  and  hallowed  the 
national  cause  by  mercy.  The  other  course  ex- 
alted and  half  hallowed  the  crime.  But  it  seems 
to  have  been  the  feeling  of  all  patriots  that  the 
constitution  could  not  be  safe  while  Strafford 
lived.  It  was  the  moderate  and  chivalrous  Essex 
that  uttered  the  hard  words — "  Stone  dead  hath 
no  fellow."  Falkland  was  a  party  to  the  death 
of  Strafford ;  so  was  Hyde,  who,  while  he  labors 
to  create  the  contrary  impression,  unwittingly  be- 
trays himself  by  a  subsequent  admission,  that 
throughout  these  transactions  he  and  Falkland 
had  never  differed  from  each  other.  So  was  Lord 
Capel,  though  afterward,  when  all  was  changed, 
himself  dying  as  a  royalist  on  the  scaffold,  he  pro- 
fessed to  repent  of  his  vote. 

Laud  was  impeached  also.  Surely  no  man 
ever  tried  the  sufferance  of  his  kind  more  severely 
than  this  persecutor  in  the  name  of  an  authority 
which  was  itself  the  rebel  of  yesterday.  There  is 
something  singularly  tyrannical  in  High  Anglican 
pretensions.  The  victims  of  Laud  had  seen  with 
their  own  eyes  the  introduction  of  the  doctrines 
and  the  practices  which  they  were  called  upon  to 
accept  as  the  immemorial  and  unbroken  tradition 
of  an  immutable  and  infallible  church.  Laud 


Pym.  35 

had  learned  government  in  the  petty  despotism  of 
a  college.  He  was  subject,  as  his  friends  said,  to 
some  infirmities  of  temper ;  "  that  is,"  remarks  Mr. 
Hallam,  "  he  was  choleric,  harsh,  vindictive,  and 
even  cruel  to  a  great  degree."  In  the  case  of  Fel- 
ton  he  wished  to  revive  the  use  of  torture ;  but 
this  was  too  much,  even  for  the  judges  of  Charles 
I.  Clarendon  tries  to  make  out  that  he  suffered 
for  his  impartial  severity  to  the  vices  of  the  great. 
No  doubt  he  was  rude,  rude  as  he  would  have 
been  to  college  under-graduates,  to  all  orders  of 
men,  and  he  made  himself  some  enemies  of  rank 
thereby.  But  he  rose  in  life  as  the  creature  and 
parasite  of  Buckingham.  He  tried,  say  High 
Church  writers,  with  complacency,  to  win  Buck- 
ingham to  the  Church's  cause.  To  the  Church's 
cause,  no;  but  to  some  cause  which  needs  the 
patronage  of  Buckinghams.  Which  element  pre- 
dominated in  his  character,  that  of  the  bigoted 
and  intolerant  priest,  or  that  of  the  ecclesiastical 
adventurer,  it  is  not  easy  to  say :  perhaps  the  Ro- 
man archives,  when  they  are  explored,  may  throw 
some  light  upon  the  subject.  No  man  ever  so 
distinctly  conceived  the  alliance  between  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  tyranny.  Who  could  conceive  it  so 
distinctly  as  the  ambitious  head  of  a  hierarchy 
which  was  a  creature  of  the  State  ?  When  he 
had  got  the  great  political  offices  placed  in  clerical 


36  Three  English  Statesmen. 

hands,  lie  thought  that  all  that  man  could  do  had 
been  done  for  the  Church  of  God.  Over  the 
porch  of  St.  Mary's  Church  at  Oxford  stand  a  Vir- 
gin and  Child,  placed  there  by  Laud.  The  Virgin 
she  seems  to  be ;  but  look  closer,  the  circlet  round 
her  head  is  not  a  heavenly  crown,  but  the  coronet 
of  a  peeress.  She  is  Political  Religion,  and  in 
her  arms  she  bears  the  infant  Unbelief. 

Pym  spoke  of  course  in  support  of  the  im- 
peachment of  Laud.  He  denounced  in  language 
strong  but  not  virulent  the  perversion  of  God's 
law  to  defend  the  lawlessness  of  man,  the  abuse 
of  the  ministry  ordained  for  the  instruction  of 
souls  to  the  promotion  of  violence  and  oppres- 
sion. He  remarked  that  "those  who  labored  in 
civil  matters  to  set  up  the  king  above  the  laws  of 
the  kingdom,  did  yet  in  ecclesiastical  matters  la- 
bor to  set  up  themselves  above  the  king."  Laud 
was  consigned  to  the  Tower ;  but  no  farther  pro- 
ceedings were  taken  against  him  till  the  hand  of 
death  was  on  Pym ;  and  I  am  persuaded  that  had 
Pym  lived,  Laud  would  not  have  died.  It  was 
the  narrower  and  more  cruel  Presbyterians  that 
brought  the  old  man  to  the  block. 

And  now  that  promise  of  a  clean  sweeping  of 
the  house  from  floor  to  roof,  which  Pym  whis- 
pered in  Clarendon's  ear  at  the  meeting  of  the 
parliament,  was  vigorously  kept.  All  the  engines 


Pym.  37 

of  the  tyranny  were  demolished ;  all  its  chief 
agents  deprived  and  banished.  The  return  to 
government  without  parliaments  was  "barred  by 
the  Triennial  Act.  Ship-money  judges  learned, 
and  bequeathed  to  all  who  might  like  them  be 
tempted  to  pervert  law  to  the  purposes  of  power, 
the  lesson  that  the  justice  of  a  nation,  though  it 
sleeps,  may  not  be  dead.  A  doubt  was  raised 
whether  the  king  would  consent  to  the  punish- 
ment of  so  many  and  such  high  delinquents. 
"Shall  we  therefore  doubt  of  justice,"  said  Pyrn, 
"  because  we  have  need  of  great  justice  ?" 

It  is  mournful  to  say  that  one  of  the  com- 
plaints against  the  king  was  his  lenity  to  Popish 
priests.  But  in  him,  the  persecutor  of  the  Puri- 
tans, this  lenity  was  not  toleration,  but  conniv- 
ance. When  the  law,  hateful  as  it  was,  was  as- 
serted, and  the  priests  were  left  to  the  Commons, 
their  lives  were  safe — safer,  as  Clarendon  peevish- 
ly says,  than  if  they  had  been  pardoned  under 
the  great  seal.  Pym  declared  expressly  that  he 
did  not  desire  any  new  laws  against  Popery,  or 
any  rigorous  courses  in  the  execution  of  those  al- 
ready in  force :  he  was  far  from  seeking  the  ruin 
of  their  persons  or  estates  ;  only  he  wished  they 
might  be  kept  in  such  a  condition  as  to  restrain 
them  from  doing  hurt.  To  restrain  them  from 
doing  hurt  was  unhappily  in  those  days  part  of 


38  Three  English  Statesmen. 

a  statesman's  duty.  They  were^  liegemen  and 
soldiers  of  that  successor  of  the  apostles  whose 
confederates  were  Philip  II.  and  Charles  IX.,  and 
who  struck  a  medal  in  honor  of  the  massacre  of 
St.  Bartholomew. 

And  now,  all  these  reforms  having  been  accom- 
plished, all  these  offenders  punished,  all  these  se- 
curities for  lawful  government  provided,  the  king 
having  even  assented  to  the  act  which,  in  clear 
contradiction  to  his  prerogative,  forbade  the  dis- 
solution of  the  then  parliament. without  its  own 
consent,  was  it  not  time  to  bring  the  movement 
to  a  close,  and  to  replace  the  sovereign  power, 
which  the  parliament  had  virtually  seized,  in  the 
king's  hands  ?  So  thought  many  who  had  up  to 
this  point  been  zealous  reformers,  and  some,  at 
all  events,  whose  opinions  we  are  bound  to  treat 
with  respect.  So  thought  not  Pym  and  Hamp- 
den.  To  them  it  seemed  that  the  king  could  not 
be  trusted ;  that  the  last  day  of  the  parliament 
would  be  the  last  of  his  good  faith ;  that  they 
must  go  on  till  they  had  left  him  no  power  to 
undo  the  work  which  had  been  done.  They  re- 
membered the  double  answer  to  the  Petition  of 
Right.  They  remembered,  as  they  showed  on  all 
occasions,  the  fate  of  Sir  John  Eliot.  We  have 
good  reason,  they  perhaps  had  better  reason,  to 
believe  that  the  court  was  still  hostile,  still  in- 


Pym.  39 

triguing,  still  aiming  at  a  counter  revolution; 
and  Clarendon  owns  that  Charles  had  been  per- 
suaded to  consent  to  measures  which  he  abhorred, 
on  the  ground  that  they  might  be  afterward  re- 
voked on  the  plea  of  duress.  To  the  last  it 
proved  hard  to  bind  this  anointed  king.  But 
let  us  not  forget  to  say  -emphatically,  that  the 
leaders  of  the  Commons  needed  all  this  to  justify 
them  in  giving  the  word  for  revolution. 

They  prepared  a  great  appeal  to  the  nation, 
which  took  the  shape  of  the  Grand  Kemonstrance. 
Charles  now  went  to  Scotland,  ostensibly  to  set- 
tle matters  there  and  disband  the  armies,  really 
to  make  himself  a  party,  and  provide  himself  with 
weapons  against  the  leaders  of  the  opposition. 
Episcopacy  being  at  this  time  threatened  with 
abolition,  he  assured  its  friends  that  if  they  could 
keep  the  Church  safe  during  his  absence,  he  would 
undertake  for  its  safety  on  his  return.  Hampden 
went,  with  other  delegates  of  the  parliament,  to 
watch  him,  while  Pym  remained  at  the  centre  of 
affairs,  one  proof  among  many  that  able,  powerful, 
and  revered  as  Hampden  was,  Pym,  not  Hamp- 
den, was  the  real  chief.  The  higher  social  posi- 
tion of  Hampden  is  perhaps  the  main  source  of 
the  contrary  impression.  King  Pym  was  the 
name  given  to  Pym  by  the  lampooners,  and 
though  in  jest  they  spoke  the  truth.  "  The  most 


40  Three  English  Statesmen. 

popular  man,"  says  Clarendon,  "  and  the  most 
able  to  do  hurt,  that  hath  lived  in  any  time." 
The  most  able  to  do  hurt,  that  is  the  phrase :  how 
can  a  leader  of  the  people  use  his  power  for  good  ? 
And  now  came  the  sinister  news  of  the  attempt 
to  make  away  with  or  kidnap  the  covenanting 
chiefs  in  Scotland ;  and  close  upon  it,  at  once  ter- 
rible and  maddening  to  Protestant  hearts,  the 
tidings  of  the  rising  of  the  Catholics  and  of  the 
massacre  of  the  Protestants  in  Ireland.  The  king 
was  innocent  of  the  Irish  rebellion ;  it  was  simply 
a  natural  episode  in  the  Irish  land  question.  But 
he  wrote  to  Secretary  Nicholas,  "  I  hope  this  ill 
news  of  Ireland  will  hinder  some  of  those  follies 
in  England." 

It  did  not  hinder  the  preparation  of  the  Grand 
Remonstrance.  But  a  chivalrous  royalist  tried  to 
hinder  all  the  follies  in  a  more  practical  way.  A 
letter  was  one  day  delivered  to  Pym  in  the  house 
by  a  messenger  who  had  received  it  from  a  horse- 
man in  grey.  When  it  was  opened,  there  dropped 
from  it  a  rag  which  had  been  taken  from  a  plague 
sore,  and  was  of  course  full  of  infection.  The 
writer  intimated  that,  if  this  did  not  do  the  busi- 
ness, a  surer  weapon  would  be  tried.  A  surer 
weapon,  it  seems,  was  tried,  but  it  struck  the 
wrong  man.  The  world  improves,  though  slow- 
ly. Then  it  was  the  stab  of  the  assassin's 


Pym.  41 

dagger ;  now  it  is  only  the  stab  of  the  assassin's 
tongue. 

And  now  the  Grand  Remonstrance  was  ready. 
Manifestly  drawn  by  Pym,  it  recites  through  a 
long  series  of  clauses,  but  with  monumental  grav- 
ity and  terseness,  the  grievances  for  which  Par- 
liament had  extorted  redress,  and  concludes,  in 
effect,  by  calling  on  the  nation  to  support  its 
leaders  in  making  the  work  good  against  evil 
counselors  and  reaction.  On  the  morning  of 
the  23d  of  November,  1641,  it  lay  engrossed 
upon  the  table  of  the  House  of  Commons;  not 
the  present  House  of  Commons,  as  Mr.  Forster  re- 
minds us,  but  the  narrow,  ill-lighted,  dingy  room 
in  which  for  centuries  some  of  the  world's  most 
important  work  was  done.  And  never,  perhaps, 
did'  that  old  room,  never  did  any  hall  of  debate, 
witness  such  an  oratorio  struggle  as  the  debate  on 
the  Grand  Remonstrance.  The  speakers  were 
Pym,  Hampden,  Falkland,  Hyde,  Culpepper,  Or- 
lando Bridgman,  Denzil  Hollis,  Waller,  Glyn, 
Maynard,  others  of  name.  The  stake  was  the 
revolution  and  the  fortunes  of  all  who  were  em- 
barked in  it.  Cromwell  said  that  if  they  had  lost 
he  would  have  left  England.  The  forces  were  by 
this  time  evenly  balanced,  for  secession  to  the 
court  had  made  great  gaps  in  the  patriot  array, 
and  in  the  royalist  ranks  were  now  seen  not  only 


42  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Digby,  Hyde,  Culpepper,  but  Falkland  —  Falk- 
land, in  whose  house,  the  free  resort  of  all  learn- 
ing, a  college,  as  his  friend  calls  it,  situated  in  a 
purer  air,  no  small  part,  perhaps,  of  the  intellect- 
ual elements  of  the  revolution  had  been  formed. 
There  were  many  waverers  whose  votes  were  still 
to  be  lost  or  won.  From  noon  to  past  midnight 
the  battle  raged ;  for  a  battle  it  was  of  orators, 
not  dictating  pamphlets  to  the  reporters,  but  grap- 
pling with  each  other  for  victory.  The  merest 
skeleton,  alas !  of  the  speeches  alone  remains. 
Pym  rose  when  the  debate  was  at  its  height,  re- 
plying to  the  leaders  on  the  king's  side — Hyde, 
Falkland,  Culpepper,  and  Sir  Edward  Dering. 
That  the  house  was  thinned  by  fatigue  before  the 
division  has  been  proved  to  be  a  mistake ;  though 
there  were  many  trimmers  who  stayed  away  al- 
together. At  midnight  the  Remonstrance  was 
earned  by  eleven — 159  to  148.  So  charged  was 
the  air  with  the  electricity  of  that  fierce  debate, 
that  when  the  royalist  Palmer  attempted  to  pro- 
test, a  tumult  arose  in  which,  as  one  who  was 
present  says,  they  had  almost  sheathed  their 
swords  in  each  others'  breasts.  In  the  following 
days  the  exasperated  majority  proceeded  to  vio- 
lent measures  against  members  of  the  minority. 
Let  us  never  glorify  revolution ! 

Now  Charles  arrived  from  Scotland,  inflamed 


Pym.  43 

by  contact  with  the  fiery  spirit  of  Montrose,  and 
bringing  the  proofs  he  had  sought  of  the  com- 
plicity of  the  opposition  leaders  with  the  Scotch. 
He  found  the  royalist  reaction  strong,  many  gained 
over  by  the  queen,  the  students  of  the  Temple  hot 
in  his  favor,  a  royalist  lord  mayor,  who  got  up 
for  him  an  enthusiastic  reception  in  the  city.  He 
was  in  an  atmosphere  of  violence.  Whitehall 
was  thronged  with  disbanded  officers  and  soldiers, 
ready  at  his  command  to  fall  on.  The  parliament, 
by  a  bold  act  of  sovereign  power,  had  raised  for 
itself  a  guard.  Soon  the  names  of  Cavalier  and 
Roundhead  were  heard ;  soon  blood  was  shed,  and 
the  hand  which  unfolds  the  book  of  history  turned 
the  red  page  of  civil  war.  The  French  queen,  ig- 
norant that  in  England  a  nation  lay  behind  the 
parliament,  thought  the  time  had  come  for  crush- 
ing the  ringleaders  and  stamping  out  the  revolu- 
tion. Even  now  it  seems  Charles  wavered  be- 
tween two  policies,  and  made  some  overtures  to 
Pym.  Then  he  gave  ear  to  the  queen  and  Digby, 
impeached  the  five  members,  and  went  himself, 
with  an  armed  train,  to  seize  them  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  All  know  how  the  attempt  was 
foiled;  how  Lady  Carlyle — a  storm-bird  of  this 
revolutionary  storm,  the  political  devotee  first  of 
Strafford,  and  when  Strafford  fell,  of  his  conqueror 
— conveyed  a  warning  to  Pym ;  how  the  queen 


44  Three  English  Statesmen. 

cried  joyfully  that  the  king  was  master  again  of 
his  kingdom,  and  found  that  she  had  spoken  too 
soon;  how  Charles  entered  the  House,  looked 
toward  the  place,  on  the  right  hand  near  the  bar, 
where  Pym  sat,  found  that  he  and  all  the  "birds" 
were  "  flown ;"  left  the  House  amid  cries  of  "  Privi- 
lege ;"  tried  the  city ;  found  there  now,  instead  of 
an  enthusiastic  greeting,  shouts  of  "  To  your  tents, 
O  Israel ;"  and  departed  from  Whitehall  to  return 
once  more  ;  how  the  five  members  were  brought 
back  in  triumph,  "  and,"  as  Clarendon  says,  with 
an  irony  too  near  the  truth,  "set  upon  their 
thrones  again ;"  and  how  four  thousand  freehold- 
ers of  Buckinghamshire  rode  up  to  protect  their 
Hampden.  Where  are  those  four  thousand  free- 
holders of  Buckinghamshire  now  ?  And  where 
then  our  English  Hampden  stood,  speaking  for 
English  liberty,  who  stands  now  upholding  mar- 
tial law  as  the  suspension  of  all  law  ? 

Pym  must  now  have  seen  that  he  had  to  con- 
duct a  civil  war.  His  first  task  was  to  strength- 
en the  weak  knees  of  the  Lords.  The  special 
grievance  of  the  Lords,  the  preference  of  upstart 
ecclesiastics  to  the  great  nobility  in  appointments 
to  the  offices  of  the  State,  had  long  ago  been  re- 
dressed ;  they  saw  that  matters  were  going  too 
far  for  an  aristocracy,  and  they  had  begun  by 
their  qualms  greatly  to  disturb  the  unity  of  ac- 


Pym.  45 

tion.  They  had  thrown  out  the  bill  for  taking 
away  the  votes  of  the  bishops.  A  great  popular 
demonstration  was  got  up  against  obstruction. 
Pym  carried  the  petitions  of  the  people  to  the 
Lords,  and  backed  them  with  a  speech,  in  which  he 
said  that  the  Commons  "  would  be  sorry  that  the 
story  of  that  parliament  should  tell  posterity  that 
in  so  great  a  danger  and  extremity  the  House  of 
Commons  should  be  enforced  to  save  the  king- 
dom alone."  The  Lords  again  showed  tact ; 
they  passed  the  bishops'  bill  with  only  three 
dissentient  voices,  and  they  also  passed  the  bill 
giving  Parliament  the  command  of  the  militia. 

The  passing  of  the  bill  for  taking  away  the 
bishops'  votes  was  a  matter  of  vital  necessity  to 
Pym,  who  though  himself,  as  has  been  said  already, 
an  Episcopalian,  and  the  reverse  of  a  fanatic,  was 
thrown  more  and  more,  as  the  struggle  went  on 
and  the  moderates  seceded,  on  the  Presbyterians 
and  the  Independents.  From  the  Independents 
we  may  be  sure  his  cultivated  statesmanship 
would  shrink;  but  as  a  leader  he  must  have 
noted  that  the  unwavering  courage  and  devotion 
of  these  men,  their  fixity  of  purpose,  their  terrible 
force,  stood  out  more  clearly  as  the  sky  darken- 
ed and  the  storm  came  on.  Mirabeau  marked 
the  intensity  of  conviction  which  was  to  give  ul- 
timate ascendancy  to  the  chief  of  the  Jacobins. 


46  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Pym  may  have  marked  the  same  thing  in  Crom- 
well. 

The  final  rupture  between  the  king  and  the 
Commons  took  place  on  the  demand  of  the  par- 
liament for  the  control  of  the  military  forces  of 
the  kingdom.  No  doubt  if  Charles  had  yielded 
to  this  demand,  nothing  would  have  been  left 
him  but  the  name  and  state  of  a  king.  And 
yet  while  the  king  had  the  power  of  the  sword, 
could  a  constitution  which  he  desired  to  over- 
throw be  secure  ?  The  question  is  not  made  less 
grave  by  the  substitution  of  a  standing  army  for 
a  militia.  It  may  one  day  present  itself  again. 
In  truth  it  does  partly  present  itself  whenever 
an  attempt  is  made  to  bring  the  Horse  Guards 
under  constitutional  control. 

A  pause  ensues  of  eight  months,  during  which 
all  Englishmen  are  choosing  their  parts,  all  pre- 
paring for  civil  war ;  the  king's  pursuivants  and 
his  commissions  of  array  are  being  encountered 
by  the  commissioners  and  the  ordinances  of  the 
parliament ;  the  old  corselet  and  steel-cap,  the 
old  pike,  and  sword,  and  carbine  are  being  taken 
down  from  the  wall  where  they  had  hung  since 
the  time  of  the  Armada;  the  hunter  and  the 
farm-horse  are  being  trained  to  stand  fire ;  squad- 
rons of  yeomen,  battalions  of  burghers  are  being 
drilled  by  officers  who  had  served  under  Gusta- 


Pym.  47 

vus ;  French  and  German  engineers  are  organiz- 
ing the  artillery ;  uniforms  are  being  made  for 
Newcastle's  white-coats,  Hampden's  green-coats, 
Lord  Saye's  blue-coats,  the  City  of  London's  red- 
coats ;  banners  are  being  embroidered  with  mot- 
toes, loyal  or  patriotic ;  friends  who  have  taken 
opposite  sides  with  sad  hearts  are  waving  a  last 
farewell  across  the  widening  gulf  to  each  other. 
Sir  William  Waller,  the  parliamentarian  general, 
writes  to  his  future  antagonist,  the  royalist  gen- 
eral, Sir  Ralph  Hopton — "  My  affections  to  you 
are  so  unchangeable,  that  hostility  itself  can  not 
violate  my  friendship  to  your  person ;  but  I  must 
be  true  to  the  cause  wherein  I  serve.  The  great 
God,  who  is  the  searcher  of  my  heart,  knows  with 
what  reluctance  I  go  upon  this  service,  and  with 
what  perfect  hatred  I  look  upon  a  war  without 
an  enemy.  The  God  of  peace  in  his  good  time 
send  us  peace,  and  in  the  mean  time  fit  us  to  re- 
ceive it.  We  are  both  on  the  stage,  and  we 
must  act  the  parts  that  are  assigned  us  in  this 
tragedy.  Let  us  do  it  in  a  way  of  honor,  and 
without  personal  animosities."  Not  only*  friend 
against  friend,  neighbor  against  neighbor,  but 
father  against  son,  son  against  father,  brother 
against  brother,  women's  hearts  torn  between  the 
husband  who  fought  on  one  side,  the  father  and 
brother  who  fought  on  the  other ;  those  who  last 


48  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Christmas  met  round  the  same  board,  before  next 
Christmas    to    meet    in    battle.      If   the    Hio;h 

O 

Church  bishops  and  clergy  were  too  roughly 
handled,  as  unhappily  they  were,  let  it  be  re- 
membered that  this  was  their  war.  It  was  truly 
called  Bellum  Episcopale.  "  I  have  eaten  the 
king's  bread,"  said  Sir  Edmund  Verney,  the 
king's  standard-bearer,  "  near  thirty  years,  and  I 
will  not  do  so  base  a  thing  as  to  forsake  him. 
I  choose  rather  to  lose  my  life  (which  I  am  sure 
I  shall  do)  to  preserve  and  defend  those  things 
which  are  against  my  conscience  to  preserve  and 
defend ;  for  I  will  deal  freely  with  you,  I  have 
no  reverence  for  the  bishops,  for  whom  this  quar- 
rel subsists."  Sir.  Edmund's  presentiment  was 
true;  the  first  battle  released  him  from  this 
struggle  between  his  conscience  and  his  chivalry. 
Let  it  be  noted,  however,  that  the  injunction 
of  Sir  William  Waller  was  not  unobserved. 
This  war  was  on  the  whole  carried  on  in  a  way 
of  honor ;  and  if  not  without  personal  animosity, 
at  least  without  the  savage  cruelty  which  has 
marked  the  civil  wars  of  some  nations.  It  was 
waged  like  a  war  of  principle,  like  the  war  of  a 
self-controlled  and  manly  race.  It  was  entered 
upon  too,  by  the  Commons  at  least,  in  the  right 
spirit,  as  a  most  mournful  necessity,  with  public 
humiliation  and  prayer.  The  play-houses  were 


Pym.  49 

closed  by  an  ordinance  of  the  Parliament  as  in  a 
time  of  national  sorrow.  These  hypocrites,  say 
royalists,  knelt  down  to  pray,  and  rose  up  again 
to  shed  innocent  blood.  And  does  not  every  re- 
ligious soldier,  when  he  goes  into  battle,  do  the 
same? 

The  king  had  now  on  his  side  almost  all  the 
nobility,  most  of  the  wealthier  gentry,  and  the 
more  backward  parts  of  the  country,  in  which 
the  feudal  tie  between  the  land-owners  and  the 
peasantry  was  still  strong;  such  as  the  western 
counties,  Wales,  and  part  of  the  north.  Of 
course  he  had  the  Episcopalian  clergy,  and  the 
cathedral  towns  and  universities  which  were  un- 
der their  influence.  Oxford,  once  the  intellect- 
ual head-quarters  of  Simon  de  Montfort,  was  now 
the  head-quarters  of  Charles.  The  Roman  Cath- 
olics also  were  with  him ;  he  and  they  were  in 
the  same  plot  against  liberty,  though  they  did 
not  yet  quite  understand  each  other.  Pym  and 
the  Commons  were  strong  in  the  more  advanced 
and  commercial  districts,  especially  in  the  eastern 
counties.  They  had  all  the  great  towns,  even 
those  in  the  districts  favorable  to  the  enemy. 
"The  town  of  Manchester,"  says  Clarendon, 
"  had  from  the  beginning,  out  of  that  factious 
humor  which  possessed  most  corporations,  and 

the  pride  of  their  wealth,  opposed  the  king,  and 

C 


50  Three  English  Statesmen. 

declared  magisterially  for  the  parliament."  Bir- 
mingham, too,  according  to  the  same  authority, 
"  was  of  as  great  fame  for  hearty,  willful,  affected 
disloyalty  to  the  king  as  any  place  in  England." 
London  was  the  head-quarters ;  not  a  London  of 
warehouses  at  one  end  and  Belgravias  at  the 
other,  but  a  great  city  democracy,  still  warlike, 
as  the  conduct  of  the  train-bands  at  Newbury 
proved,  and  devoted  with  heart  and  purse  to  the 
cause.  Above  all,  the  Commons  had  the  lesser 
gentry  and  the  independent  yeomanry,  every- 
where attached  to  the  cause  by  its  religious  side. 
Those  independent  yeomanry,  with  high  hearts 
and  convictions  of  their  own,  who  filled  the  ranks 
of  the  Ironsides,  who  conquered  for  English  lib- 
erty at  Marston,  Naseby,  and  Worcester,  in  their 
native  England  are  now  seen  no  more.  Here 

O 

they  have  left  a  great,  perhaps  a  fatal,  gap  in  the 
ranks  of  freedom.  But  under  Grant  and  Sher- 
man they  still  conquer  for  the  good  cause. 

Foreign  powers  stood  neutral.  Happily  for 
us,  Laud's  desire  of  reunion  with  Rome  had  not 
been  fulfilled,  and  the  Anglican  reaction  in  En- 
gland remained  isolated  from  the  Catholic  reac- 
tion in  the  rest  of  Europe.  The  Anglican  Pope 
could  not  stoop  to  submission,  and  Rome  would 
hear  of  no  compromise.  To  all  offers  of  com- 
promise, to  all  offers  of  any  thing  but  submission, 


Pym.  51 

she  then  said  non  possumus,  and  she  says  non 
possumus  still.  So  the  Catholic  powers  left 
Charles  to  the  doom  of  a  heretic  prince,  and 
when  his  head  fell  on  the  scaffold,  took  the  op- 
portunity of  buying  his  fine  collection  of  works 
of  art.  Spain  played  her  own  game  in  Ireland ; 
and  Richelieu  throughout  the  whole  of  these 
transactions  had  been  intriguing  with  the  lead- 
ers of  the  Commons.  The  sympathies  of  the 
States  of  Holland  were  with  the  parliament, 
those  of  the  House  of  Orange  with  the  king. 

Standing  army  in  those  days  there  was  none ; 
if  there  had  been,  Charles  would  have  crushed 
liberty.  The  navy  was  on  the  side  of  the  Com- 
mons. The  sailors  were  inclined  to  Puritanism, 
and  they  were  the  sons  of  those  who  had  fought 
against  the  Armada. 

The  voice  of  the  cannon  was  heralded  by  vol- 
leys of  paper  missiles  from  both  sides.  This  is 
the  stormy  birth-hour  of  our  newspaper  press ; 
and  it  is  instructive  to  see  that,  from  the  first, 
the  party  of  "blood  and  culture"  held  its  own 
in  ruffianism  and  ribaldry.  A  statelier  war 
of  manifestoes  meanwhile  was  waged  between 
Pym  in  the  name  of  the  Commons,  and  Claren- 
don in  the  name  of  the  king.  Hallam  thinks 
that  Clarendon  had  the  best  of  it.  Mr.  Forster 
scouts  the  idea.  But  I  am  of  Hallam's  mind. 


52  Three  English  Slatesmem. 

Pym  is  trying  to  make  the  parchment  of  legality 
cover  a  revolution ;  and  so  stretched,  the  parch- 
ment cracks,  as  Clarendon  does  not  fail  to  mark. 
Yet  Pym  was  wise  in  presenting  his  cause  as  le- 
gally as  possible  to  a  law-loving  people,  who  had 
not  learned  to  think  of  law  apart  from  a  king. 
Nor  does  he  fail  to  display  his  power,  which  lay 
especially  in  unmasking  fallacies  of  principle. 
Hyde  had  argued  that  the  king  had  as  good  a 
title  to  his  town  of  Hull  and  its  magazines,  as 
any  of  his  subjects  had  to  their  houses  and  lands, 
and  that  to  dispose  of  the  place  without  his  con- 
sent would  shake  the  foundations  of  property  in 
general.  "  Here,"  replies  Pym,  "  that  is  laid 
down  for  a  principle  which  would  indeed  pull 
up  the  very  foundation  of  the  liberty,  property, 
and  interest  of  every  subject  in  particular,  and 
of  all  the  subjects  in  general,  if  we  should  admit 
it  for  a  truth  that  his  majesty  hath  the  same 
right  and  title  to  his  towns  and  magazines 
(bought  with  the  public  money,  as  we  conceive 
that  at  Hull  to  have  been)  that  every  particular 
man  hath  to  his  house,  lands,  and  goods ;  for  his 
majesty's  towns  are  no  more  his  own  than  his 
people  are  his  own ;  and  if  the  king  had  a  prop- 
erty in  all  his  towns,  what  would  become  of  the 
subjects'  property  in  their  houses  therein  ?" 

A  provisional  government  of  five  peers  and 


Pym.  53 

ten  commoners  was  formed,  under  the  name  of 
the  Committee  of  Safety,  and  installed  at  Derby 
House.  At  its  head  was  Pym.  Hampden  went 
down  to  his  county  to  muster  his  yeomen,  and 
to  second  and  perhaps  watch  Essex,  a  military 
grandee  of  rather  lukewarm  sentiments,  though 
honorable  and  trustworthy,  whom  it  was  thought 
politic  to  make  commander-in-chief.  Pym  in  his 
youth  had  been  in  the  Exchequer;  and  the 
Chancellorship  of  the  Exchequer  was  the  office 
destined  for  him  when  he  and  his  friends  were 
on  the  point  of  forming  a  government.  He  now 
used  his  financial  knowledge  to  organize  the 
finance  of  the  Commons  in  the  way  of  regular 
taxation  extending  over  all  the  districts  in  their 
power,  to  the  envy  of  Clarendon,  whose  side  was 
supplied  only  by  irregular  contributions  and  by 
the  rapine,  as  wasteful  as  it  was  odious,  of  Ku- 
pert.  "  One  side,"  says  Clarendon,  mournfully, 
"  seemed  to  fight  for  monarchy  with  the  weapons 
of  confusion,  and  the  other  to  destroy  the  king 
and  government  with  all  the  principles  and  regu- 
larity of  monarchy." 

Toward  the  end  of  October,  1642,  whatever 
there  may  have  been  on  Pym's  brow,  deep  care 
must  have  been  in  his  heart,  for  the  king  was 
moving  southward  on  London,  Essex  was  wait- 
ing on  his  march,  and  a  battle  was  at  hand. 


54  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Accordingly,  on  Monday,  the  24th,  came  first, 
borne  on  the  wings  of  fear,  the  news  of  the  great 
defeat ;  then  better  news,  then  worse  news  again ; 
then  Lord  Wharton  and  Mr.  Strode  from  the  army, 
with  authentic  tidings  of  the  doubtful  victory 
of  Edgehill.  Edgehill,  the  king's  evening  halt- 
ing-place, looks  out  from  the  brow  of  the  high  ta- 
ble-land on  a  wide  champaign ;  and  immediately 
below  lies  the  little  town  of  Keynton,  the  even- 
ing halting-place  of  Essex.  Between  Edgehill  and 
Keynton  is  a  wood  called  the  Graves,  the  burial- 
place  of  five  thousand  Englishmen  slain  by  En- 
glish hands,  among  them  it  was  said  of  a  soldier 
to  whom  death  was  made  more  bitter  by  the 
thought  that  he  had  fallen  by  the  carbine,  in 
vain  avoided,  of  his  brother.  There,  on  the  Sab- 
bath day,  October  23,  Roundhead  and  Cavalier 
first  tried  the  bitter  taste  of  civil  war.  From 
two  o'clock  till  nightfall  the  plain  between  Edge- 
hill  foot  and  Keynton  was  filled  with  the  wild 
and  confused  eddies  of  a  battle  fought  by  raw 
troops  under  inexperienced  commanders.  The  ac- 
tion was,  however,  a  sort  of  epitome  of  the  war. 
It  began  with  the  desertion  to  the  enemy  of  a 
body  of  Parliamentary  horse  under  Fortescue, 
named  by  his  sponsors,  in  prophetic  irony,  Sir 
Faithful.  Rupert  with  his  cavalry  carried  all  be- 
fore him,  rode  headlong  off  in  pursuit,  and  return- 


Pym.  55 

ed  with  his  wearied  horsemen  to  find  the  Parlia- 
mentary infantry  in  possession  of  the  field,  and 
the  king's  person  in  great  danger.  The  army  of 
the  Commons  was  enabled  to  hold  its  ground 
that  night  and  the  next  day,  and  thus  to  gain 
the  semblance  of  a  victory — a  semblance  which 
was  the  saving  of  the  cause — by  the  zeal  of  the 
country  people,  who  eagerly  brought  them  pro- 
visions, while  the  king's  soldiers,  when  they  went 
out  to  forage,  were  knocked  upon  the  head. 
But  as  yet  there  was  no  Cromwell  in  command, 
and  the  serving-men  and  tapsters  in  the  army 
were  too  many,  the  Ironsides  were  too  few,  as  in 
the  Federal  army  at  Bull's  Run  there  was  too 
much  of  New  York  and  too  little  of  Illinois. 
Edgehill  was,  in  fact,  our  Bull's  Run.  The  panic 
of  the  Parliamentary  horse  at  the  first  charge  of 
the  Cavaliers  was  shameful.  Some  must  have 
fled  still  earlier,  if  there  be  any  truth  in  Claren- 
don's statement  that  though  the  battle  began  so 
late,  runaways,  and  not  only  common  soldiers, 
but  officers  of  rank,  were  in  St.  Albans  before 
night-fall.  If  the  Timers  correspondent  had  been 
there,  he  would  certainly  have  reported  that  En- 
glishmen would  not  fight.  Our  nation,  like  the 
American  nation  of  late,  had  to  go  through  great- 
er trials,  and  be  thrown  more  upon  its  nobler 
self,  before  it  could  deserve  victory. 


56  Three  English  Statesmen. 

The  Commons  voted  Essex  £5,000  for  his 
success.     But  meanwhile  the  kino-  was  t  akin  £ 

O  O 

Banbury,  and  in  a  fortnight  he  was  before  Lon- 
don. The  Commons  had  gone  into  the  conflict, 
like  the  people  of  the  Northern  States,  full  of 
overweening  confidence  in  their  superior  numbers 
and  resources,  and  ignorant  of  the  bitterness  of 
war.  They  had  now  found  to  their  cost  that  an 
aristocracy  and  its  dependents,  used,  the  masters 
to  command  and  the  servants  to  obey,  have  a 
great  advantage  over  a  democracy  in  the  field, 
till  the  democracy  have  learned  the  higher  dis- 
cipline of  intelligent  submission  to  command  for 
the  sake  of  their  own  course.  From  the  pinna- 
cle of  exaltation  they  fell  into  the  depth  of  dis- 
couragement ;  and  the  thirteen  months  of  life 
which  remained  to  Pym  were  months  of  incessant 
struggle  against  despondency,  defection,  and  dis- 
aster. The  peers  soon  began  to  fall  away.  The 
few  members  of  the  Upper  House  who  stayed  at 
Westminster  were  a  perpetual  source  of  timid 
councils.  Essex  himself,  though  he'  kept  his 
faith,  felt  the  bias  of  his  order ;  he  was  at  best 
far  from  a  great  general,  and  his  operations  in 
the  field  were  apt  to  be  affected  by  fits  of  politi- 
cal moderation.  The  fortune  of  war  was  on  the 
whole  decidedly  in  favor  of  the  king.  The 
Fairfaxes  were  defeated  at  Atherton.  Sir  Wil- 


Pym.  57 

liam  Waller,  after  the  brief  career  of  victory 
which,  gained  him  the  nickname  of  William 
the  Conqueror,  met  with  a  bloody  and  decisive 
overthrow  at  Eoundway  Down.  Bristol  was 
surrendered  by  Fiennes,  the  only  notable  instance 
of  a  want  of  military  courage  among  these  lead- 
ers who,  many  of  them  so  late  in  life,  had 
changed  peaceful  arts  for  war.  Only  in  the  asso- 
ciation of  the  eastern  counties,  where  Cromwell 
fought  under  Lord  Mandeville,  the  light  of  hope 
still  shone.  The  discovery  of  the  plot  formed  by 
Waller,  who  had  been  a  leading  patriot  in  the 
debate  on  the  Grand  Remonstrance,  to  deliver 
London  to  the  king,  revealed  the  abyss  on  the 
edge  of  which  the  leaders  of  the  Commons  stood. 
A  mob  of  women,  and  women  in  men's  clothes, 
came  to  the  House  of  Commons,  calling  for  the 
traitor  Pym,  and  it  was  necessary  to  disperse 
them  with  cavalry.  Hampden,  Pym's  second 
self,  and  the  second  pillar  of  the  cause,  fell  in  a 
petty  skirmish  on  Chalgrove  Field.  Yet  Pym 
seems  to  have  remained  master  of  the  burning 
vessel,  tossed  as  she  was  upon  a  raging  sea. 
He  managed  the  war,  kept  watch  against  conspir- 
acy, held  together  the  discordant  and  wavering 
party  in  Parliament,  sustained  by  his  eloquence 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  city.  Unable  to  quell  the 

tendency  of  the  peace  party  to  treat,  he  adroitly 

02 


58  Three  English  Statesmen. 

fell  in  with  it ;  went  down  himself  to  the  city, 
which  had  become  infuriated  at  the  report  of 
negotiations,  to  vindicate  the  character  of  the 
Parliamet,  and  thus  remaining  master  of  the 
negotiations,  prevented  them  from  degenerating 
into  surrender.  While  the  king,  made  confident 
by  success,  was  issuing  proclamations  promising 
pardon  to  all  but  leading  rebels,  Pym  daringly 
impeached  the  queen  for  the  part  which  she  was 
taking  in  the  war.  The  queen  was  not  in  his 
hands,  nor  likely  to  be ;  and  if  she  had  been  sjie 
would  have  been  safe.  The  move  was  intended 
only  to  commit  Parliament  past  recall,  and  to 
hurl  defiance  at  the  king.  The  Presbyterians 
were  secured  by  the  appointment  of  the  Assem- 
bly of  Divines  to  reform  the  Church  after  their 
model.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  free  nature  of 
Pym,  and  the  free  natures  of  other  men  like 
Pym,  struggled  hard  and  long  before  they  could 
consent  to  bow  their  necks  to  the  yoke  of  the 
Calvinistic  covenant,  on  which  condition  alone 
the  aid,  now  indispensable,  could  be  obtained 
from  the  Scotch. 

The  tide  still  ran  for  the  king.  Gloucester, 
the  last  stronghold  of  the  Commons  in  the  west, 
was  in  peril.  Essex  had  sent  to  the  Houses 
proposals  for  an  accommodation,  the  rejection  of 
which  Pym  and  St.  John,  by  their  utmost  efforts, 


Pym.  59 

could  only  just  procure.  Then  Pym  went  down 
to  the  tent  of  Essex,  tried  on  the  moody  and 
jealous  aristocrat  the  powers  of  persuasion  which 
had  carried  the  Grand  Remonstrance,  and  tried 
them  not  in  vain.  Essex  marched :  Gloucester 
was  relieved ;  the  king  was  worsted  at  New- 
bury ;  and  a  ray  of  victory  breaking  from  the 
cloud,  shone  upon  Pym's  last  hour. 

Work  tells  upon  the  sensitive  organizations 
of  men  of  genius.  Pym  had  been  working,  as 
the  preacher  of  his  funeral  sermon  tells  us,  from 
three  in  the  morning  till  evening,  and  from  even- 
ing again  till  midnight.  He  must  have  borne  a 
crushing  weight  of  anxiety  besides.  The  loath- 
some fables  invented  by  the  royalists  are  not 
needed  to  account  for  the  failure  of  his  health. 
He  met  his  end,  if  we  may  trust  the  report  of 
his  friends,  with  perfect  calmness.  At  the  last, 
we  are  told,  he  fell  into  a  swoon,  and  when  he 
recovered  his  consciousness,  seeing  his  friends 
weeping  round  him,  he  told  them  that  he  had 
looked  death  in  the  face,  and  therefore  feared  not 
the  worst  he  could  do ;  added  some  words  of  re- 
ligious hope  and  comfort ;  and,  while  a  minister 
was  praying  with  him,  quietly  slept  with  God. 
Funeral  sermons  are  not  history.  No  character 
is  flawless,  least  of  all  the  characters  of  men  who 
lead  in  violent  times.  But  if  the  cause  of  En- 


60  Three  English  Statesmen. 

glish  liberty  was  a  good  cause,  Pym's  conscience, 
so  far  as  we  can  see,  might  well  bid  him  turn 
calmly  to  his  rest. 

The  King  of  the  Commons  was  buried  with 
the  utmost  pomp  and  magnificence  in  the  resting- 
place  of  kings.  The  body  was  borne  from 
Derby  House  to  "Westminster  Abbey  by  ten  of 
the  leading  members  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
followed  by  both  Houses  of  Parliament  in  full 
mourning,  by  the  Assembly  of  Divines,  and  by 
many  gentlemen  of  quality,  with  two  heralds  of 
arms  before  the  corpse  bearing  the  crest  of  the 
deceased.  This  last  piece  of  state  shows  how 
near  we  still  are  to  feudalism,  how  far  from  the 
Sans-culottes.  Ten  thousand  pounds  were  voted 
to  pay  Pym's  debts,  a  proof  that  he  had  not 
grown  rich  by  the  public  service.  No  doubt  he 
had  been  obliged  to  keep  some  state  and  hos- 
pitality, as  head  of  the  provisional  government, 
at  Derby  House.  A  pension  was  also  voted  to  his 
son,  who  bore  arms  for  the  Parliament,  but  after 
the  Restoration  sank  into  a  baronetcy  —  one 
proof  among  many  that  public  virtue  is  not 
hereditary  and  that  its  titles  ought  not  to  be  so. 
Nor  did  Oxford  fail  in  its  way  to  do  honor  to 
the  departed  chief.  The  news  of  Pym's  death 
had  been  long  eagerly  expected  there,  and  when 
it  arrived,  bonfires  were  lighted,  and  there  was 


Pym.  6 1 

high  carousing  among  the  Cavaliers.  He  was 
gone,  the  man  most  needful  to  the  common- 
wealth, and,  as  it  seemed,  at  the  hour  of  her 
utmost  need.  But  before  he  went  he  had  turned 
the  tide,  and  he  bequeathed  victory  to  his  cause. 
Had  Pym  lived  and  remained  master  of  the 
movement,  what  would  have  been  the  result  ? 
Into  what  port  did  he  mean  to  steer  his  revolu- 
tion ?  To  have  embarked  on  the  sea  of  civil  war 
without  a  port  in  view  would  not  have  been  the 
part  of  a  great  man.  The  indications  are  very 
slight  in  themselves ;  but  taken  with  the  circum- 
stances and  the  reason  of  the  case,  they  may  per- 
haps amount  to  probability.  If  my  surmise  is 
right,  Pym  would  have  preserved  the  monarchy, 
he  would  not  have  changed  the  family,  but  he 
would  have  changed  the  king.  He  would  have 
put  the  king's  nephew,  Prince  Charles  Louis,  the 
eldest  son  of  the  Protestant  heroine,  Elizabeth 
Queen  of  Bohemia,  on  the  English  throne.  The 
prince,  unlike  his  brothers  Rupert  and  Maurice, 
had  shown  sympathy  with  the  Commons,  and  he 
was  received  at  London  with  much  state  just 
about  the  time  when  Pym  died.  English  histo- 
ry presented  to  Pym's  historic  mind  more  than 
one  example  of  such  a  change  of  king.  Thus  he 
would  have  done  in  1643  what  was  afterward 
done  in  1688,  but  he  would  probably  have  done 


62  Three  English  Statesmen. 

it  with  a  stronger  and  more  statesman-like  hand, 
less  in  the  interest  of  the  aristocracy  and  the 
hierarchy,  and  more  in  the  interest  of  the  nation. 
At  the  Restoration,  Pym's  body  was  torn, 
under  a  royal  warrant,  from  its  tomb,  and 
thrown  with  the  bodies  of  other  rebels  below 
the  rank  of  regicide  into  a  pit  in  the  adjoin- 
ing church-yard.  The  great  man  of  the  heroic 
age  lies  not  beside  the  parliamentary  tacticians 
whom  our  age  calls  great.  As  you  stand  on 
the  north  side  of  the  nave  of  St.  Margaret's 
Church,  where  some  canons'  houses  once  were, 
your  feet  are  on  the  dust  of  Pym,  of  Blake  and 
Dean,  of  Strode,  of  May  the  parliamentary  histo- 
rian, of  Twiss  the  Prolocutor  of  the  Assembly 
of  Divines,  of  Dorislaus  the  martyred  envoy  of 
the  Commonwealth,  of  Cromwell's  mother,  whom 
also  the  chivalry  and  piety  of  the  Restoration 
tore  out  of  her  grave.  Hanipden  had  fallen  and 
been  buried  in  his  own  county,  or  his  dust  too 
would  be  there.  In  the  vestibule  of  that  vast 
and  sumptuous  but  feebly  conceived  and  effem- 
inately ornamented  pile,  no  unmeet  shrine  of 
Plutocracy,  the  present  House  of  Commons, 
stand  on  either  hand  the  statues  of  parliamentary 
worthies.  Pym  is  not  there.  Ignorance  proba- 
bly it  is  that  has  excluded  the  foremost  worthy 
of  the  mall.  Pym  does  not  look  down  on  the 


Pym.  63 

men  who  now  fill  the  house  which  once  he  led : 
nor  do  they  read  on  the  pedestal  of  his  statue 
the  moral  of  his  political  life — "The  best  form 
of  government  is  that  which  doth  actuate  and 
dispose  every  part  and  member  of  a  state  to  the 
common  good."  But  Pym  has  a  statue  in  histo- 
ry, and  seldom  has  there  been  more  need  for  un- 
veiling it  than  now. 


CROMWELL. 


II. 

CROMWELL. 

I  HAVE  called  my  subject  "  Cromwell."  I 
ought,  perhaps,  rather  to  have  called  it  the  Pro- 
tectorate. For  to  that  part  of  Cromwell's  life 
what  I  have  to  say  will  be  almost  entirely  con- 
fined. I  speak  of  him  not  as  a  general,  or  as  a 
party  leader,  but  as  a  prince. 

In  the  early  debates  on  religion,  amid  the  great 
orators  of  the  Parliaments  of  Charles,  there  had 
stood  up  a  gentleman  farmer  of  Huntingdonshire, 
a  fervent  Puritan,  with  power  on  his  brow  and  in 
his  frame,  with  enthusiasm,  genius,  even  the  ten- 
derness of  genius  in  his  eye;  but  in  a  dress  which 
scandalized  young  courtiers,  and  with  an  unmu- 
sical voice,  his  sentences  confused,  his  utterance 
almost  choked  by  the  vehemence  of  his  emotion. 
On  him  God  had  not  bestowed  the  gift  of  soul- 
enthralling  words ;  his  eloquence  was  the  thun- 
der of  victory. 

Victory  went  with  him  where  he  fought,  when 
she  had  deserted  the  standards  of  all  the  other 


68  Three  English  Statesmen. 

chiefs  of  his  party.  Hope  shone  in  him  "  as  a 
pillar  of  fire,"  when  her  light  had  gone  out  in  all 
other  men.  He  came  to  the  front  rank  from  the 
moment  when  debating  was  over,  and  the  time 
arrived  for  organizing  war.  From  the  first  he 
rightly  conceived  the  condition  of  success — a  sol- 
diery of  yeomen  fearing  God,  fearing  nothing  else, 
submitting  themselves  for  the  sake  of  their  cause 
to  a  rigid  discipline,  as  the  only  match  for  the 
impetuous  chivalry  of  the  Cavaliers :  and  his  con- 
ception was  embodied  in  the  Ironsides.  Marston 
crowns  the  first  period  of  his  career.  It  was  won 
by  the  discipline  of  his  men.  Then  came  the 
struggle  between  his  party,  who  wished  to  con- 
quer, and  the  Presbyterians,  who  but  half  wished 
to  conquer,  who  by  this  time  hated  the  sectaries 
in  their  own  ranks  more  than  the  common  enemy, 
and  whose  aristocratic  leaders  now  saw  plainly 
that  the  revolution  was  going  beyond  the  objects 
of  an  aristocracy,  and  that  it  was  likely  to  do  too 
much  for  the  people.  The  Self-denying  Ordi- 
nance set  aside  the  Presbyterian  commanders.  It 
included  in  its  operation  Cromwell.  But  Fair- 
fax desired  him,  before  he  resigned  his  command, 
to  perform  one  service  more ;  and  it  was  felt,  as 
it  could  not  fail  to  be  felt,  that  to  part  with  him 
was  to  part  with  victory.  This,  as  far  as  I  can 
see,  not  any  intrigue  of  his,  is  the  true  account  of 


Cromwell.  69 

his  retention  in  command.  Naseby  was  won  by 
him  with  his  new  model  army ;  it  made  him  the 
first  man  in  England ;  though  since  Marston  the 
adverse  factions  had  been  viewing  his  rising 
greatness  with  a  jealous  eye,  and  vainly  plotting 
his  overthrow.  Then  came  the  captivity  and  the 
death  of  the  king,  with  the  interlude  of  Hamil- 
ton's Scotch  invasion,  and  the  victory  of  Preston, 
gained  in  Cromwell's  fashion,  which  was  not  to 
manoeuvre,  but  to  train  his  men  well,  march 
straight  to  his  enemy,  and  fight  a  decisive  battle 
— a  fashion  natural  perhaps  to  one  who  had  not 
studied  the  science  of  strategy,  but  at  the  same 
time  merciful,  since  no  brave  men  perished  other- 
wise than  in  fight,  the  loss  of  life  was  compara- 
tively small,  the  results  immense.  Cromwell  is 
now  the  general  of  the  Commonwealth  :  he  con- 
quers Ireland ;  he  conquers  Scotland ;  the  "  crown- 
ing mercy"  of  Worcester  puts  supreme  power 
within  his  grasp.  After  a  pause,  he  makes  him- 
self Protector. 

There  are  two  points,  dark  spots  as  I  think 
them,  in  his  career  on  which  I  must  dwell  to  pay 
a  tribute  to  morality.  The  execution  of  the  king 
is  treated  by  cynical  philosophy  in  its  usual  strain : 
"This  action  of  the  English  regicides  did  in  effect 
strike  a  damp  like  death  through  the  heart  of 
flunkeyism  universally  in  this  world;  whereof 


70  Three  English  Statesmen. 

flunkeyism,  cant,  cloth  -  worship,  and  whatever 
other  ugly  name  it  have,  has  gone  about  incurably 
sick  ever  since,  and  is  now  at  length  in  these  gen- 
erations very  rapidly  dying."  This  is  not  the 
tone  in  which  the  terrible  but  high-souled  fanat- 
ics who  did  it  would  have  spoken  of  their  own 
deed.  They  at  least  so  far  respected  the  feelings 
of  mankind,  or  rather  their  own  feelings,  as  to 
drape  the  scaffold  with  black.  Cromwell  would 
have  saved  the  king;  he  would  probably  have 
made  terms  with  him,  and,  if  he  could  have  trust- 
ed him,  set  him  again  upon  his  throne.  Himself 
a  most  tender  husband  and  father,  he  had  seen 
Charles  amid  his  family,  and  had  been  touched. 
But  Charles  could  not  see  that  he  was  fallen ;  his 
anointed  kingship  was  still  fact-proof.  He  tried 
to  play  off  one  of  the  two  contending  parties 
against  the  other  when  it  was  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  to  them  both.  Cromwell  discovered 
his  duplicity.  He  then  tried  to  frighten  Charles 
out  of  the  kingdom,  by  sending  him  an  intima- 
tion at  Hampton  Court  that  there  were  designs 
against  his  life.  Charles  fled  from  Hampton 
Court,  but,  his  flight  being  mismanaged,  he  be- 
came a  prisoner  in  the  Isle  of  Wight.  There  he 
negotiated  with  the  Parliament,  in  which  the  ene- 
mies of  Cromwell  and  the  Independents  were 
still  strong.  At  the  same  time  he  was  carrying 


Cromwell.  7 1 

on  the  intrigues  with  the  Koyalist  faction  which 
produced  the  rising  in  Kent  and  the  invasion  of 
England  by  Hamilton.  Before  the  army  march- 
ed against  Hamilton,  the  officers,  exasperated  at 
having  their  lives  and  their  cause  thus  again  put 
in  peril,  after  so  many  bloody  fields,  by  the  du- 
plicity of  the  king,  held  a  prayer-meeting  at 
Windsor,  and  there  resolved — "  That  it  was  their 
duty,  if  ever  the  Lord  brought  them  back  in 
peace,  to  call  Charles  Stuart,  that  man  of  blood, 
to  an  account  for  the  blood  he  had  shed  and  the 
mischief  he  had  done  to  his  utmost  against  the 
Lord's  cause  and  the  people  in  these  poor  na- 
tions." They  had  before  them  a  precedent  in  the 
case  of  Mary  Stuart.  When  they  returned  vic- 
torious, they  signed  a  petition  "  for  justice  and  a 
settlement  of  the  kingdom."  Cromwell  sends  the 
petition  to  Fairfax,  with  a  letter,  saying,  that  he 
finds  among  the  officers  of  his  regiment  a  great 
sense  of  the  sufferings  of  the  kingdom,  and  a 
great  zeal  to  have  impartial  justice  done  upon  of- 
fenders. He  adds  that  he  does  himself  from  his 
heart  concur  with  them,  and  believes  that  God 
has  put  these  things  into  their  hearts.  Thus  the 
king  was  brought  to  trial  and  to  the  scaffold. 
This,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  is  the  real  account  of 
Charles's  death,  and  of  Cromwell's  share  in  it. 
Of  Cromwell's  own,  there  is,  touching  this  the 


72  Three  English  Statesmen. 

gravest  and  most  questionable  act  of  his  life,  no 
recorded  word.  He  does  not  touch  on  it  in  his 
speeches  or  his  letters ;  he  appears  not  to  have 
touched  on  it  in  conversation  with  his  friends. 
Never  did  a  man  more  completely  carry  his  se- 
cret with  him  to  the  grave.  That  the  execution 
of  the  king  was  a  fatal  error  of  policy  is  a  thing 
so  clear  to  us,  that  we  can  scarcely  suppose  one 
so  sagacious  as  Cromwell  to  have  been  altogether 
blind  to  it ;  and  it  is,  therefore,  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  his  course  was  determined  not  by 
policy,  but  by  sympathy  with  the  feelings  of  his 
soldiers.  The  fierce  and  hard  Old  Testament 
sentiments  which  were  in  their  hearts  were  in 
his  heart  too.  Nothing,  unhappily,  can  be  less 
true  than  that  the  act  of  the  regicides  struck  a 
damp  through  the  heart  of  flunkey  ism,  or  that 
flunkeyism  has  gone  about  incurably  sick  of  it 
ever  since.  It  is  liberty,  if  any  thing,  that  has 
gone  about  sick  of  it.  The  blood  of  the  royal 
martyr  has  been  the  seed  of  flunkeyism  from  that 
day  to  this.  "What  man,  what  woman,  feels  any 
sentimental  attachment  to  the  memory  of  James 
II.  ?  There  would  have  been  less  attachment,  if 
possible,  to  the  memory  of  the  weak  and  perfid- 
ious Charles,  if  his  weakness  and  his  perfidy  had 
not  been  glorified  by  his  death. 

The  other  point  is  the  slaughter  of  the  garri- 


Cromwell.  73 

sons  of  Drogheda  and  Wexford.  Here  again  the 
cynical  philosophy,  which  from  a  satiety  as  it 
seems  of  civilization  we  are  beginning  to  affect, 
exults  in  the  blow  dealt  to  what  it  calls  false 
philanthropy,  rose-water,  universal  pardon  and 
benevolence.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  these  phi- 
losophers will,  as  soon  as  possible,  tell  us  what 
philanthropy  is  not  false,  lest  we  should  all  be- 
come brutes  together.  The  war  in  Ireland  had 
been  on  both  sides  a  war  of  extermination.  The 
Catholics  had  begun  it  by  a  great  massacre  of 
the  Protestants,  on  the  reality  or  the  atrocity  of 
which  it  seems  to  me  idle  to  cast  a  doubt,  though 
assuredly  if  such  deeds  could  ever  be  pardoned, 
they  might  be  pardoned  in  a  people  so  deeply 
wronged,  so  brutalized  by  oppression,  as  the 
Catholics  of  Ireland  then  were.  These  very  gar- 
risons had  taken  part,  or  were  believed  to  have 
taken  part,  in  cruelties  worse  than  those  com- 
mitted by  Nana  Sahib.  The  feeling  of  English 
Protestants  against  the  Papist  rebels  of  Ireland, 
which  of  course  Cromwell  could  not  help  shar- 
ing, was  at  least  as  strong  as  that  of  English- 
men in  our  own  time  against  the  Indian  muti- 
neers. Cromwell  summoned  both  places  to  sur- 
render, with  an  implied  offer  of  mercy,  before  he 
stormed.  The  laws  of  war  in  those  days  were 

far  less  humane   and  chivalrous  than  they  are 

D 


74  Three  English  Statesmen. 

now :  the  garrison  of  a  place  taken  by  storm  was 
not  held  to  have  a  right  to  quarter.  The  Cath- 
olic hero,  Count  Tilly,  had  put  not  only  the  garri- 
son but  the  inhabitants  of  the  great  Protestant 
city  of  Magdeburg  to  the  sword ;  and  the  same 
thing  had  been  done  by  Alva  and  other  generals 
on  the  Catholic  side.  Cromwell  says  in  his  dis- 
patch :  "  I  am  persuaded  that  this  is  a  righteous 
judgment  of  God  upon  these  wretches,  who  have 
imbrued  their  hands  in  so  much  innocent  blood ; 
and  that  it  will  tend  to  prevent  the  effusion  of 
blood  for  the  future,  which  are  the  satisfactory 
grounds  to  such  actions,  which  otherwise  can  not 
but  work  remorse  and  regret."  This  excuse  is 
not  sufficient,  if  any  innocent  persons  were  in- 
volved in  the  slaughter ;  no  excuse  can  be  suffi- 
cient for  the  shedding  of  innocent  blood  on  any 
occasion  or  under  any  pretense,  except  in  fair  bat- 
tle. But  it  is  at  all  events  the  excuse  of  a  moral 
and  reasonable  being.  "Durst  thou  wed  the 
heaven's  lightning  and  say  to  it,  Godlike  one  ?" 
This,  I  think,  is  the  excuse  of  one  who,  under  the  in- 
fluence Of  a  literary  theory,  has  for  the  moment  di- 
vested himself  of  his  morality  and  of  his  reason  too. 
We  pass  on  then  to  the  Protectorate.  Great 
questions  concerning  both  the  Church  and  the 
State  are  still  open ;  and  till  they  are  settled  the 
judgment  of  history  on  Cromwell  can  scarcely  be 


Cromwell.  75 

fixed.  To  some  the  mention  of  his  reign  still  re- 
calls a  transient  domination  of  the  powers  of 
evil  breaking  through  the  divine  order  of  the 
political  and  ecclesiastical  world.  Others  regard 
his  policy  as  a  tidal  wave,  marking  the  line  to 
which  the  waters  will  once  more  advance,  and 
look  upon  him  as  a  ruler  who  was  before  his 
hour,  and  whose  hour  perhaps  is  now  come. 
Here  we  must  take  for  granted  the  goodness  of 
his  cause,  and  ask  only  whether  he  served  it  faith- 
fully and  well. 

Of  his  genius  there  is  little  question.  Claren- 
don himself  could  not  be  blind  to  the  fact  that 
such  a  presence  as  that  of  this  Puritan  soldier 
had  seldom  been  felt  upon  the  scene  of  history. 
Necessity,  "who  will  have  the  man  and  not  the 
shadow,"  had  chosen  him  from  among  his  fellows 
and  placed  her  crown  upon  his  brow.  I  say 
again  let  us  never  glorify  revolution ;  let  us  not 
love  the  earthquake  and  the  storm  more  than  the 
regular  and  beneficent  course  of  nature.  Yet 
revolutions  send  capacity  to  the  front  with  vol- 
canic force  across  all  the  obstacles  of  envy  and  of 
class.  It  was  long  before  law-loving  England 
could  forgive  one  who  seemed  to  have  set  his 
foot  on  law ;  but  there  never  perhaps  was  a  time 
when  she  was  not  at  heart  proud  of  his  glory, 
when  she  did  not  feel  safer  beneath  the  aegis  of 


76  Three  English  Statesmen. 

his  victorious  name.  As  often  as  danger  threat- 
ens us,  the  thought  returns,  not  that  we  may 
have  again  a  Marlborough  or  a  Black  Prince ; 
but  that  the  race  which  produced  Cromwell  may, 
at  its  need,  produce  his  peer,  and  that  the  spirit 
of  the  Great  Usurper  may  once  more  stand  forth 
in  arms. 

Of  Cromwell's  honesty  there  is  more  doubt. 
And  who  can  hope,  in  so  complex  a  character, 
to  distinguish  accurately  the  impulses  of  ambi- 
tion from  those  of  devotion  to  a  cause?  Who 
can  hope,  across  two  centuries,  to  pierce  the  secret 
of  so  deep  a  heart?  We  must  not  trust  the  en- 
vious suggestions  of  such  observers  as  Ludlow  or 
even  Whitelocke.  Suspicions  of  selfish  ambition 
attend  every  rise,  however  honest,  however  in- 
evitable, from  obscurity  to  power.  Through  "  a 
cloud  not  of  war  only  but  detraction  rude,"  the 
"  chief  of  men"  had  "  ploughed  his  glorious  way 
to  peace  and  truth."  These  witnesses  against 
him  are  not  agreed  among  themselves.  Ludlow 
is  sure  that  Cromwell  played  the  part  of  an  arch- 
hypocrite  in  pressing  Fairfax  to  command  the 
army  of  Scotland ;  but  Mrs.  Hutchinson  is  sure 
that  though  he  was  an  arch-hypocrite  on  other 
occasions,  on  this  he  was  sincere.  After  the 
death  of  the  king,  after  the  conquest  of  Ireland, 
when  the  summit  of  his  ambition  must  have  been 


Cromwell.  77 

full  in  his  view,  lie  married  his  eldest  son  Eich- 
ard  to  the  daughter  of  a  private  gentleman,  bar- 
gaining anxiously  though  not  covetously  about 
the  settlement,  and  caring,  it  seems,  for  nothing 
so  much  as  that  the  family  with  which  the  con- 
nection was  formed  should  be  religious.  Can 
Eichard  have  been  then,  in  his  father's  mind,  heir 
to  a  crown  ? 

Cromwell  was  a  fanatic,  and  all  fanatics  are 
morally  the  worse  for  their  fanaticism :  they  set 
dogma  above  virtue,  they  take  their  own  ends  for 
God's  ends,  and  their  own  enemies  for  His.  But 
that  this  man's  religion  was  sincere  who  can 
doubt  ?  It  not  only  fills  his  most  private  letters, 
as  well  as  his  speeches  and  dispatches,  but  it  is 
the  only  clue  to  his  life.  For  it,  when  past  forty, 
happy  in  his  family,  well  to  do  in  the  world,  he 
turned  out  with  his  children  and  exposed  his  life 
to  sword  and  bullet  in  obscure  skirmishes  as  well 
as  in  glorious  fields.  On  his  death-bed  his 
thoughts  wandered  not  like  those  of  Napoleon 
among  the  eddies  of  battle  or  in  the  mazes  of 
state-craft,  but  among  the  religious  questions  of 
his  youth.  Constant  hypocrisy  would  have  been 
fatal  to  his  decision.  The  double-minded  man  is 
unstable  in  all  his  ways.  This  man  was  not  un- 
stable in  any  of  his  ways:  his  course  is  as 
straight  as  that  of  a  great  force  of  nature.  There 


78  Three  English  Statesmen. 

is  something  not  only  more  than  animal,  but 
more  than  natural  in  his  courage.  If  fanatics  so 
often  beat  men  of  the  world  in  council,  it  is  part- 
ly because  they  throw  the  die  of  earthly  destiny 
with  a  steady  hand  as  those  whose  great  treas- 
ure is  not  here. 

Walking  amid  such  perils,  not  of  sword  and 
bullet  only,  but  of  envious  factions  and  intrigu- 
ing enemies  on  every  side,  it  was  impossible  that 
Cromwell  should  not  contract  a  wariness,  and 
perhaps  more  than  a  wariness  of  step.  It  was 
impossible  that  his  character  should  not  in  some 
measure  reflect  the  darkness  of  his  time.  In  es- 
tablishing his  government  he  had  to  feel  his  way, 
to  sound  men's  dispositions,  to  conciliate  different 
interests ;  and  these  are  processes  not  favorable  to 
simplicity  of  mind,  still  less  favorable  to  the  ap- 
pearance of  it,  yet  compatible  with  general  hon- 
esty of  purpose.  As  to  what  is  called  his  hyp- 
ocritical use  of  Scriptural  language,  Scriptural 
language  was  his  native  tongue.  In  it  he  spoke 
to  his  wife  and  children,  as  well  as  to  his  armies 
and  his  Parliaments  :  it  burst  from  his  lips  when 
he  saw  victory  at  Dunbar :  it  hovered  on  them  in 
death,  when  policy,  and  almost  consciousness,  was 
gone. 

He  said  that  he  would  gladly  have  gone  back 
to  private  life.  It  is  incredible  that  he  should 


Cromwell.  79 

have  formed  the  design,  perhaps  not  incredible 
that  he  should  have  felt  the  desire.  Nature  no 
doubt  with  high  powers  gives  the  wish  to  use 
them ;  and  it  must  be  bitter  for  one  who  knows 
that  he  can  do  great  things,  to  pass  away  before 
great  things  have  been  done.  But  when  great 
things  have  been  done  for  a  great  end  on  an 
illustrious  scene,  the  victor  of  Naseby,  Dunbar, 
and  Worcester,  the  saviour  of  a  nation's  cause, 
may  be  ready  to  welcome  the  evening  hour  of 
memory  and  repose,  especially  if,  like  Cromwell, 
he  has  a  heart  full  of  affection  and  a  happy  home. 
Of  the  religion  of  hero-worship  I  am  no  dev- 
otee. Great  men  are  most  precious  gifts  of  heav- 
en, and  unhappy  is  the  nation  which  can  not  pro- 
duce them  at  its  need.  But  their  importance 
in  history  becomes  less  as  civilization  goes  on. 
A  Tirnour  or  an  Attila  towers  unapproachably 
above  his  horde :  but  in  the  last  great  struggle 
which  the  world  has  seen,  the  Cromwell  was  not 
a  hero,  but  an  intelligent  and  united  nation. 
And  to  whatever  age  they  may  belong,  the  great- 
est, the  most  godlike  of  men,  are  men,  not  gods. 
They  are  the  offspring,  though  the  highest  off-, 
spring,  of  their  age.  They  would  be  nothing 
without  their  fellow-men.  Did  Cromwell  escape 
the  intoxication  of  power  which  has  turned  the 
brains  of  other  favorites  of  fortune,  and  bear  him- 


8o  Three  English  Statesmen. 

self  always  as  one  who  held  the  government  as  a 
trust  from  God  ?  It  was  because  he  was  one  of 
a  religious  people.  Did  he,  amid  the  temptations 
of  arbitrary  rule,  preserve  his  reverence  for  law, 
and  his  desire  to  reign  under  it  ?  It  was  because 
he  was  one  of  a  law-loving  people.  Did  he,  in 
spite  of  fearful  provocation,  show  on  the  whole 
remarkable  humanity  ?  It  was  because  he  was 
one  of  a  brave  and  humane  people.  A  somewhat 
larger  share  of  the  common  qualities — this,  and 
this  alone  it  was  which,  circumstances  calling  him 
to  a  great  trust,  had  raised  him  above  his  fellows. 
The  impulse  which  lent  vigor  and  splendor  to 
his  government,  came  from  a  great  movement,  not 
from  a  single  man.  The  Protectorate  with  its 
glories  was  not  the  conception  of  a  lonely  intel- 
lect, but  the  revolutionary  energy  of  a  mighty  na- 
tion concentrated  in  a  single  chief. 

I  can  never  speak  of  Mr.  Carlyle  without  pay- 
ing grateful  homage  to  the  genius  which  pro- 
duced the  "French  Revolution."  That  work  is 
his  best,  partly  perhaps  because  it  is  free  from  a 
hero.  His  "'Cromwell"  is  hero-worship,  and 
therefore  it  is  not  true ;  but  like  the  alchemists 
who  made  real  chemical  discoveries  while  they 
were  in  search  of  their  visionary  gold,  though  he 
has  failed  to  reveal  a  god,  he  has  not  failed  to  help 
us  in  our  study  of  the  character  of  a  great  man. 


Cromwell.  8 1 

Carlyle  prostrates  morality  before  greatness. 
His  imitators  prostrate  it  before  mere  force, 
which  is  no  more  adorable  than  mere  fraud,  the 
force  of  those  who  are  physically  weak.  We 
might  as  well  bow  down  before  the  hundred- 
handed  idol  of  a  Hindoo.  To  moral  force  we 
may  bow  down :  but  moral  force  resides  and  can 
reside  in  those  only  whose  lives  embody  the  mor- 
al law.  It  is  found  in  the  highest  degree  in 
those  at  whom  hero-worship  sneers.  Hero-wor- 
ship sneers  at  Falkland :  yet  Falkland  by  his 
purity  and  his  moderation  has  touched  and  influ- 
enced the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  forever.  We 
shall  come  to  the  vulgar  worship  of  success^  and 
be  confounded  with  those  who  look  upon  mis- 
fortune as  the  judgment  of  heaven  upon  the  van- 
quished. "  The  judgment  of  heaven  was  upon 
them,  sir,"  said  a  Tory  bishop,  speaking  of  the 
regicides,  to  Quin ;  "  the  judgment  of  heaven  was 
upon  them — almost  all  of  them  came  to  violent 
ends."  "  So,  my  lord,"  replied  Quin,  "  did  almost 
all  the  Apostles."  What  makes  us  men,  not 
brutes,  if  it  is  not  that  we  reverence  ourselves, 
and  listen  to  the  god  in  our  own  breasts,  instead 
of  blindly  following  the  animal  whom  victory  in 
a  conflict  of  force  has  marked  out  as  the  leader 
of  our  herd  ? 

Neither  force  do  I  worship  in  Cromwell  nor 
D2 


82  Three  English  Statesmen. 

arbitrary  power.  Milton  was  no  Imperialist,  no 
admirer  of  the  Caesars,  no  apologist  of  Nero.  I 
hope  to  show  some  ground  for  thinking  that  ar- 
bitrary power  was  not  dear  to  Cromwell's  heart. 
He  was  great  enough,  if  I  mistake  not,  and  felt 
himself  great  enough,  to  reign  among  the  free. 
An  ignoble  nature  like  that  of  Bonaparte  may 
covet  despotism.  A  noble  nature  never  cared  for 
the  affection  of  a  dependent  or  for  the  obedience 
of  a  slave.  /  / 

When  a  revolution  is  over,  a  government  must 
be  founded  at  once  to  gather  in  the  fruits  and  to 
heal  the  wounds  of  the  struggle.  And  the  only 
men  -who  can  found  it  are  those  who  remain  mas- 
ters of  the  revolution.  The  man  who  remained 
master  of  the  English  Revolution  was  the  victor 
of  Worcester.  The  conquest  of  the  Royalists 
was  not  his  only  service,  or  his  only  claim  to  su- 
preme power.  In  the  English,  as  afterward  in 
the  French  Revolution,  the  fountains  of  the  social 
deep  had  at  last  been  broken  up,. and  terrible 
forms  of  anarchy  had  begun  to  appear.  Crom- 
well had  quelled  anarchy  as  well  as  tyranny. 
With  a  promptness  and  an  integrity  which  go 
far  toward  proving  his  paramount  devotion  to 
the  public  good,  as  well  as  with  a  courage,  moral 
and  personal,  which  has  never  been  surpassed, 
and  at  the  same  time  with  a  merciful  economy  of 


Cromwell.  83 

punishment  which  shows  how  different  is  the 
vigor  of  the  brave  from  the  vigor  of  the  savage, 
he  had  confronted  and  put  down  the  great  mu- 
tiny of  the  Levellers.  He  had  thus  perhaps 
saved  England  from  a  reign  of  terror.  And  they 
were  no  Parisian  street  mob,  these  insurgents 
with  whom  he  had  to  deal,  nor  were  their  leaders 
the  declaimers  of  the  Jacobin  Club.  They  were 
the  best  soldiers  that  ever  trod  a  field  of  battle, 
the  soldiers  who  had  gained  his  own  victories, 
led  by  men  of  desperate  courage,  and  fighting  for 
a  cause  in  which  they  were  reckless  of  their  lives. 
The  decimated  remnant  of  the  Long  Parliament 
was  not  a  government.  It  was  a  Revolutionary 
Assembly.  It  had  lost  the  character  of  a  govern- 
ment when  it  deposed  and  beheaded  the  king 
who  had  called  it;  when  it  abolished  the  other 
house,  which  was  as  essential  a  part  of  a  legal 
parliament  as  itself;  when  it  was  reduced  to  a 
fourth  of  its  legal  number  by  Pride's  Purge  and 
other  violent  acts  of  the  revolution.  Nor  was 
it  fit  to  become  the  government,  though  this  was 
its  aim.  Revolutionary  assemblies,  while  the 
struggle  lasts  and  egotism  is  subdued  by  danger, 
often  display  not  only  courage,  energy  and  con- 
stancy, but  remarkable  self-control.  So  sometimes 
do  revolutionary  mobs.  But  the  struggle  over, 
the  tendencies  to  faction,  intrigue,  tyranny,  and 


84  Three  English  Statesmen. 

corruption  begin  to  appear.  The  services  of  the 
Long  Parliament  as  a  Revolutionary  Assembly 
had  been  immense ;  its  name  will  be  held  in  hon- 
or while  English  liberty  endures.  But  when  it 
was  victorious  and  aspired  to  be  the  government, 
its  rule  was  the  tyranny  of  a  section,  insufferable 
to  the  great  body  of  the  nation.  It  was  a  dom- 
inant faction,  maintaining  itself  in  power  by  daily 
violence,  prolonging  all  the  evils  and  imperiling 
all  the  fruits  of  the  revolution.  In  finance  it  was 
subsisting  by  revolutionary  expedients,  by  the 
sale  of  public  property,  and  what  was  much  worse, 
by  confiscation.  Its  office  for  sequestration  in 
Haberdasher's  Hall  was  crowded  every  day  with 
the  trembling  victims  of  its  cruel  deeds.  It  had 
superseded  the  regular  courts  of  justice  by  a  rev- 
olutionary tribunal  which  had  put  a  man  to  death 
for  having  acted  as  the  emissary  of  Charles  II.  at 
Constantinople.  In  foreign  policy  it  was  running 
wild.  It  wanted  to  annex  the  Dutch  Republic, 
and  when  it  was  thwarted  in  that  chimerical 
scheme  it  plunged  the  two  Protestant  nations  into 
a  fratricidal  and  disastrous  war.  That  it  showed 
in  the  conduct  of  that  war  great  Republican  vig- 
or, and  by  the  hand  of  Vane  created  a  navy  with 
marvelous  rapidity,  was  but  a  slight  compensa- 
tion for  so  calamitous  an  error.  The  measure  by 
which  it  was  preparing  to  perpetuate  its  own  ex- 


Cromwell.  85 

istence  was  as  much  a  usurpation  as  the  assump- 
tion of  supreme  power  by  Cromwell.  And  yet 
what  could  it  do  without  a  permanent  head  of  the 
State  ?  Had  it  issued  writs  for  a  Free  Parliament 
and  dissolved,  it  would  not  only  have  committed 
suicide  itself,  but  have  plunged  the  nation  into  an 
abyss  of  anarchy  and  confusion. 

Cromwell  was  set  up  by  the  army :  whence  an 
outcry  against  a  government  of  musketeers  and 
pikemen.  A  government  of  musketeers  and  pike- 
men  is  the  greatest  of  calamities  and  the  deepest 
of  degradations ;  and  how  to  escape  the  danger 
of  such  government,  which  threatens  all  European 
nations  in  their  critical  transition  from  the  feudal 
aristocracy  of  the  past  to  the  democracy  of  the  fu- 
ture, is  now  a  pressing  question  for  us  all.  But 
the  soldiers  of  Cromwell  were  not  mere  musket- 
eers and  pikemen.  They  were  not  like  the  le- 
gionaries of  Caesar  and  the  grenadiers  of  Napole- 
on, raising  the  idol  of  the  camp  to  a  despotic 
throne.  They  were  the  best  of  English  citizens 
in  arms  for  the  nation's  cause ;  and  when  all  was 
over  with  the  cause,  they  became  the  best  of  En- 
glish citizens  again.  Through  them  the  Revolu- 
tion  had  conquered ;  they  in  truth  were  the  Rev- 
olution. They  had  no  right,  and  they  had  as  lit- 
tle inclination,  to  set  up  a  military  tyranny ;  but 
they  had  a  right  to  give  a  chief  to  the  State  and 


86  Three  English  Statesmen. 

to  support  the  government  of  the  chief  whom  they 
had  given.  It  was  in  fact  upon  them  and  their 
general,  not  upon  the  nation  or  any  considerable 
party  in  it,  that  the  Parliament  itself  rested,  and 
they  and  their  general  were  accordingly  responsi- 
ble for  its  acts  and  for  the  continuance  of  its 
power. 

Nor  was  the  chief  whom  they  gave  to  the  na- 
tion a  Caesar ;  much  less  was  he  a  Bonaparte,  an 
unprincipled  soldier  of  fortune  vaulting  on  the 
back  of  a  Revolution  to  make  himself  an  emperor. 
The  relation  of  Cromwell  to  the  English  Revolu- 
tion was  not  that  of  a  Napoleon,  but,  if  it  is  not 
blasphemy  to  mention  the  two  names  together, 
that  of  a  Robespierre.  The  chief  of  the  Rous- 
seauists  was  the  leader  of  the  most  religious  and 
the  deepest  part  of  the  French  movement,  though 
shallow  was  the  deepest.  Cromwell  was  in  like 
manner  himself  the  leader  and  embodiment  of  the 
most  religious  and  the  deepest  part  of  the  English 
movement.  He  was  Puritanism  armed  and  in 
power,  not  the  successful  general  of  a  foreign  war. 
I  say  that  in  the  case  alike  of  the  English  and  of 
the  French  Revolution  the  most  religious  part  of 
the  movement  was  the  deepest  part.  The  most 
religious  part  of  all  movements  is  the  deepest  part. 
Beneath  these  social  and  political  revolutions 
which  are  now  going  on  around  us,  and  which 


Cromwell.  87 

seem  to  move  society  so  deeply,  do  we  not  per- 
ceive, deeper  than  all,  a  revolution  in  religion — a 
revolution  which  may  one  day  clothe  itself  in 
some  form  of  power  and  cast  the  world  again  in  a 
new  mold  ? 

The  form  of  government  which  Cromwell  meant 
to  found  was  a  monarchy,  with  himself  as  mon- 
arch. I  do  not  doubt  that  this  was  his  design 
from  the  time  when  he  took  supreme  power  into 
his  hands.  But  it  was  not  to  be  a  Stuart  mon- 
archy. It  was  to  be  a  Constitutional  and  a  Prot- 
estant monarchy,  with  Parliamentary  government, 
Parliamentary  taxation,  reform  of  the  representa- 
tion, an  enlightened  and  vigorous  administration, 
the  service  of  the  State  freely  opened  to  merit, 
trial  by  jury,  law  reform,  church  reform,  university 
reform,  the  union  of  the  three  kingdoms,  a  pacified 
and  civilized  Ireland,  and  with  no  halting  and 
wavering  foreign  policy,  but  the  glorious  headship 
of  the  Protestant  cause  in  Europe ;  above  all  with 
that  to  which  Milton  pointed  as  the  chief  work 
of  his  chief  of  men,  that  for  which  the  leader 
of  the  Independents  had  throughout  fought  and 
suffered — liberty  of  conscience.  Cromwell  might 
well  think  that  he  thus  gave  the  nation  all  the 
substantial  objects  for  which  it  had  fought.  But 
how  far  in  this  policy  personal  ambition  may 
have  mingled  with  public  wisdom  is  a  question 


88  Three  English  Statesmen. 

which,  as  I  said  before,  can  be  answered  by  the 
Searcher  of  Hearts  alone. 

After  the  foundation  of  the  monarchy  would 
necessarily  have  come  a  dynasty,  with  all  the  ac- 
cidents and  infirmities  to  which  dynasties  are  lia- 
ble; but  this  dynasty  would  have  been  bound  by 
stronger  pledges  than  the  Hanoverian  dynasty  was 
to  Protestantism  and  Constitutional  Government. 

We  need  not  sneer  at  the  high  aspirations  of 
Yane  and  the  Republicans.  If  some  men  did  not 
aspire  too  high,  the  world  in  general  would  fall 
too  low.  But  few  think  that  a  democratic  repub- 
lic would  then  have  been  possible  even  for  En- 
gland ;  much  less  would  it  have  been  possible 
for  the  three  kingdoms,  as  yet  most  imperfectly 
united,  and  two  of  them  politically  in  a  very 
backward  state.  It  must  have  been  an  oligarch- 

O 

ical  republic  like  that  of  Holland:  and  it  must 
have  been,  for  a  long  time  at  least,  a  party  re- 
public. Vane  said  that  none  were  worthy  to  be 
citizens  who  had  not  fought  for  liberty.  There 
would  thus  have  been  no  prospect  of  reconcilia- 
tion or  of  oblivion :  the  fruit  of  the  nation's  suffer- 
ings would  have  been  a  chronic  civil  war.  It  was 
time  to  make  England  again  a  nation.  This  a  na- 
tional government  alone  could  do.  And  as  mat- 
ters stood,  the  government  of  a  single  chief,  raised 
in  some  measure  above  all  parties,  could  alone  be 


Cromwell.  89 

national.  Cromwell's  first  act  after  Worcester  had 
been  to  press  on  the  parliament  a  general  amnes- 
ty, in  which  he  was  supposed  as  usual  to  have 
some  sinister  end  in  view.  The  first  day  of  his 
reign  was  the  last  of  confiscation  and  of  ven- 

o 

geance.  From  that  day  every  Cavalier  was  safe 
in  person  and  estate ;  might,  after  a  short  proba- 
tion, regain  the  full  rights  of  a  citizen ;  might,  by 
mere  submission  to  the  established  government 
and  without  injury  to  his  honor,  became  eligible 
to  the  highest  offices  of  the  State. 

The  conduct  of  Cromwell  has  been  contrasted 
with  that  of  Washington.  The  two  cases  were 
quite  different.  In  the  case  of  Washington  there 
had  not  been  a  civil  war  in  the  proper  sense  of 
the  term,  but  a  national  struggle  against  an  exter- 
nal power,  which  left  the  nation  united  under  a 
national  government  at  its  close.  England,  as 
Cromwell  said  in  his  rough  way,  stood  in  need  of 
a  constable  :  America  did  not. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  insulting  violence  of  the 
manner  in  which  Cromwell  turned  out  the  Long 
Parliament  is  not  to  be  justified.  That  scene 
leaves  a  stain  on  his  character  as  a  man  and  as  a 
statesman.  By  thus  setting  his  heel  on  the  honor 
of  those  with  whom  he  had  acted,  and  whose 
commission  he  bore,  he  was  guilty  of  a  breach  of 
good  policy  as  well  as  of  right  feeling.  He  need- 


90  Three  English  Statesmen. 

lessly  stamped  the  origin  of  his  own  government 
with  the  character  of  violent  usurpation,  and  he 
made  for  himself  deadly  enemies  of  all  those  on 
whom  he  had  trampled.  It  is  not  improbable 
that  he  was  hurried  away  by  his  emotions,  which, 
dissembler  as  he  is  supposed  to  have  been,  some- 
times got  the  better,  to  an  extraordinary  ex- 
tent, of  his  outward  self-control :  and  that,  hav- 
ing wound  himself  up  by  a  great  effort  to  a 
doubtful  act,  he  went  beyond  his  mark,  and 
launched  out  into  language  and  gestures  which  to 
those  who  witnessed  them  seemed  insane.  In  his 
first  speech  to  the  Little  Parliament,  he  paid  at 
least  a  tribute  of  homage  to  legality  and  right  feel- 
ing. "  I  speak  here  in  the  presence  of  some  that 
were  at  the  closure  of  our  consultations,  and  as 
before  the  Lord — the  thinking  of  an  act  of  vio- 
lence was  to  us  worse  than  any  battle  that  ever 
we  were  in,  or  that  could  be,  to  the  utmost  hazard 
of  our  lives :  so  willing  were  we,  even  very  tender 
and  desirous,  if  possible,  that  these  men  might  quit 
their  places  with  honor."  Be  it  remembered,  too, 
that  there  was  no  insolent  parade  of  military  pow- 
er. Cromwell  went  down  to  the  house  not  in  uni- 
form, but  in  plain  clothes.  Much  less  were  there 
the  arrests,  the  street  massacres,  and  the  deporta- 
tions, which  constitute  the  glory  of  a  coup  d'etat 
in  France. 


Cromwell.  91 

To  restore  the  Constitutional  and  Protestant 
monarchy  in  his  own  person  was  Cromwell's  aim. 
In  this  enterprise  he  had  against  him  all  the  par- 
ties ;  but  he  might  flatter  himself  that  he  had 
the  secret  wishes  and  the  tendencies  of  the  nation 
on  his  side.  He  had  in  his  favor  the  divisions 
among  his  enemies,  which  were  such  that  they 
could  scarcely  ever  act  in  concert;  his  own  sur- 
passing genius ;  a  temperament  which  never  knew 
despair ;  a  knowledge  of  men  gained  by  reading 
the  heart  when  it  is  most  open,  at  the  council- 
board  in  dangerous  extremity,  or  on  the  eve  of 
battle  by  the  camp-fire  side.  And  the  army, 
though  opposed  in  the  main  to  his  design  of  re- 
storing the  monarchy,  was  bound  to  his  person  by 
the  spell  of  victory. 

The  step  from  civil  war  to  legal  government  can. 
not  be  made  at  once.  There  must  be  a  period  of 
transition,  during  which  government  is  half  milita- 
ry, half  legal,  and  while  law  is  gradually  resuming 
its  sway,  the  efforts  of  the  defeated  parties  to  pre- 
vent a  government  from  being  founded  will  have  to 
be  repressed  by  force.  It  will  be  the  duty  of  the 
head  of  the  government  to  see  that  his  measures 
of  repression  are  strong  enough  and  not  too 
strong ;  that  he  hastens,  as  much  as  the  enemies 
of  the  government  will  permit,  the  restoration 
of  the  reign  of  law.  Cromwell  well  understood 


92  Three  English  Statesmen. 

the  true  doctrine  of  political  necessity.  "When 
matters  of  necessity  come,"  he  said  to  his  par- 
liament, "  then  without  guilt  extraordinary  reme- 
dies may  be  applied ;  but  if  necessity  be  pretend- 
ed, there  is  so  much  the  more  sin."  He  did  not 
allow  the  government  to  be  military  for  an  hour; 
but  at  once  summoning  the  Barbones  Parliament, 
rendered  up  his  authority  into  their  hands.  "  To 
divest  the  sword  of  all  power  in  the  civil  adminis- 
tration" was  the  declared  object  of  the  great  sol- 
dier in  summoning  this  assembly.  A  parliament 
the  assembly  is  called ;  but  it  was  not  elective 
or  representative ;  it  was  a  convention  of  Puritan 
notables  called  by  Cromwell.  It  was  denounced 
at  the  time  and  has  since  been  commonly  regard- 
ed as  a  junta  of  fanatics  who  wanted  to  sweep 
away  law,  learning,  and  civil  society  to  make 
room  for  the  code  of  Moses  and  the  reign  of  the 
saints.  It  went  to  work  in  eleven  committees; 
for  the  reform  of  the  law ;  for  the  reform  of  pris- 
ons ;  for  the  reform  of  the  finances  and  the  light- 
ening of  taxation ;  for  Ireland ;  for  Scotland ;  for 
the  army;  for  petitions;  for  public  debts;  for  the 
regulation  of  the  commissions  of  the  peace  and 
the  reform  of  the  poor-law ;  for  the  advancement 
of  trade ;  for  the  advancement  of  learning. 
Among  its  proceedings  we  find  measures  for  the 
care  of  lunatics  and  idiots,  for  the  regular  per- 


Cromwell.  93 

formance  of  marriages  and  the  registration  of 
births  and  deaths,  for  probate  of  wills  in  all  coun- 
ties, for  law  reforms  which  pointed  both  to  a 
more  speedy  and  cheaper  administration  of  justice 
and  to  the  preparation  of  a  simple  and  intelligible 
code  of  law.  We  have  not  yet  carried  into  effect 
the  whole  programme  of  these  mad  fanatics ;  but 
we  have  carried  into  effect  a  good  part  of  it,  and 
we  are  hoping  to  carry  into  effect  the  rest.  But 
the  Barbones  Parliament  was  wanting  in  knowl- 
edge of  government :  it  attempted  too  much  and 
it  went  too  fast,  common  faults  in  a  revolution, 
when  the  minds  of  men  are  stimulated  to  the 
morbid  activity  of  political  thought.  It  aroused 
the  formidable  opposition  of  all  the  lawyers  and 
of  all  the  ministers  of  religion  :  it  showed  an  incli- 
nation prematurely  to  reduce  the  army,  which,  it 
is  idle  to  doubt,  was  still  the  indispensable  sup- 
port not  only  of  the  general's  power,  but  of  the 
cause ;  and,  moreover,  it  did  not  do  the  essential 
thing;  it  did  not  take  measures  for  the  founda- 
tion of  a  government,  while  it  had  no  title  to  be 
the  government  itself.  Cromwell  determined  to 
bring  its  sittings  to  an  end.  As  usual,  it  is 
thought  that  he  was  playing  a  deep  game,  that  he 
had  foreseen  that  the  Barbones  Parliament  must 
fail  and  that  its  failure  would  render  him  more 
indispensable  than  ever.  A  deep  game  indeed, 


94  Three  English  Statesmen. 

to  bring  together  the  leading  men  among  your 
own  friends,  discredit  them  by  failure,  and  then 
make  them  your  enemies  by  sending  them  away ! 
If  Cromwell  intended  that  the  Barbones  Parlia- 
ment should  prove  a  failure,  he  took  a  strange  way 
to  his  end,  for  he  undoubtedly  summoned  to  it 
the  best  men  he  could  find — men  so  good  that  his 
enemies  were  greatly  chagrined  at  seeing  an  as- 
sembly so  respectable  answer  to  his  call.  The 
Machiavellian  theory  of  his  conduct  was  easily 
framed  after  the  event:  no  sagacity  could  have 
framed  it  before. 

Cromwell  now  called  a  council  of  leading  men, 
civilians  as  well  as  soldiers,  to  settle  the  govern- 
ment :  and  this  council  made  him  Lord  Protector 
of  the  three  kingdoms,  with  the  provisional  con- 
stitution called  the  Instrument  of  Government. 
And  if  Cromwell  set  up  arbitrary  power,  here  is 
the  arbitrary  power  which  he  set  up.  The  ex- 
ecutive government  is  to  be  vested  in  an  elective 
Protector  and  a  Council  of  State.  The  members 
of  the  Council  of  State  for  the  first  turn  are 
named  in  the  Instrument.  When  a  vacancy  oc- 
curs, Parliament  is  to  elect  six  candidates;  of 
these  six  the  Council  of  State  is  to  choose  two, 
and  of  these  two  the  Protector  is  to  choose  one. 
The  powers  of  legislation  and  taxation  are  to  be 
vested  in  Parliament  alone,  the  Protector  having 


•  Cromwell.  95 

only  a  suspensive  veto  for  twenty  days.  A  Par- 
liament is  to  be  held  once  at  least  in  eveiy  three 
years.  The  Protector  is  to  have  the  disposal  of 
the  army  with  the  consent  of  the  Parliament 
when  Parliament  is  sitting,  of  the  elective  Coun- 
cil of  State  when  it  is  not.  In  the  event  of  war, 
Parliament  is  at  once  to  be  convoked.  The  Pro- 
tector and  the  Council  are  empowered  to  frame 
ordinances  for  the  government  of  the  country  till 
Parliament  meets ;  a  temporary  provision,  which 
only  gave  a  legal  character  to  an  inevitable  exer- 
cise of  power.  It  was  probably  designed  by  the 
chief  framers  of  the  Instrument  that  the  elective 
Protector  should  make  way  for  an  hereditary 
king ;  but  no  design  was  ever  entertained  of  de- 
parting from  the  constitutional  principles  on 
which  this  settlement  was  based :  on  the  con- 
trary, those  principles  were  afterward  most  dis- 
tinctly ratified  in  the  document  called  the  Peti- 
tion and  Advice,  under  which  Cromwell  was  in- 
vited to  take  upon  him  the  title  of  king.  The 
Protector  declared  himself  content  to  submit  to 
all  these  limitations  of  his  power,  and  ready  to 
submit  to  farther  limitations,  if  by  so  doing  he 
could  satisfy  the  Parliament  and  give  peace  to 
the  nation. 

The  constitution  enacted  by  the  Instrument 
presents  several  points  of  interest.     Government 


96  Three  English  Statesmen. 

under  it  can  hardly  be  party  government,  the 
members  of  the  Council  of  State  being  elected 
by  personal  merit,  for  life,  and  under  conditions 
which  prevent  the  Council  from  becoming  a 
cabinet  or  cabal.  Provision  is  made  for  the  per- 
manent existence  of  a  national  council,  even  in 
the  Parliamentary  recess.  The  army  is  brought 
thoroughly  under  the  constitution.  The  nation 
is  secured  against  the  danger  of  being  entangled 
in  a  war,  without  its  own  consent,  by  the  minis- 
ters of  the  crown.  The  organic  legislation  of 
Cromwell's  time  may  still  deserve  the  considera- 
tion of  constitutional  reformers,  if  the  nation 
should  ever  desire  to  emancipate  itself  from  the 
government  of  party,  which  by  its  faction-fights, 
its  rogueries,  its  hypocrisies,  the  ascendancy  which 
.it  gives  to  mere  Parliamentary  gladiators — if  the 
name  of  gladiator  is  not  profaned  by  applying  it 
to  the  hero  of  a  venomous  tongue — and  by  its 
failures  at  home  and  abroad,  must  be  beginning 
to  breed  serious  thoughts  in  the  mind  of  every 
independent  lover  of  his  country. 

The  Instrument  embodied  a  measure  of  Par- 
liamentary Eeform,  which  Clarendon  says  was 
fit  to  be  more  warrantably  made  and  in  a  better 
time.  The  representation  was  fairly  re-distributed 
on  the  basis  of  population.  The  small  boroughs 
were  swept  away.  Kepresentatives  were  given 


Cromwell.  97 

to  large  towns  hitherto  unrepresented,  Manches- 
ter among  the  number.  The  county  representa- 
tion was  greatly  increased ;  Yorkshire,  for  exam- 
ple, having  fourteen  members.  Not  only  real 
but  personal  property  was  admitted  as  a  qualifi- 
cation for  the  county  franchise,  every  person  be- 
ing empowered  to  vote  who  had  property  of  any 
kind  to  the  value  of  £200,  so  that  the  copy-hold- 
ers, of  whom  there  were  a  large  number  at  that 
period,  would  have  been  enfranchised,  as  well  as 
the  leaseholders  for  lives,  who  were  also  a  nu- 
merous class.  Tenants  at  will,  on,  the  other  hand, 
would  not  have  been  enfranchised  unless  they 
had  independent  property,  to  the  requisite  value, 
of  their  own.  The  result  would  have  been  most 
worthy  and  independent  county  constituencies, 
consisting  in  great  measure  of  the  yeomen,  whose 
political  virtue  and  military  valor  had  just  saved 
and  still  sustained  the  country.  The  borough 
franchise,  with  all  its  varieties  of  suffrage,  was 
left  untouched.  If  this  measure  still  does  not 
sound  democratic,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that 
serfage  had  but  recently  ceased  to  exist  in  En- 
gland, while  its  traces  still  lingered  in  Scotland ; 
that  the  manufacturing  interest  and  the  artisan 
class  were  in  their  infancy ;  that  this  was  the  last 
stage  of  the  feudal,  whereas  ours  is  the  industrial 

era.     To  know  the  value  of  Cromwell's  Keform, 

E 


98  Three  English  Statesmen. 

we  have  only  to  consider  what  the  rotten  bor- 
oughs, to  which  the  Restoration  of  course  revert- 
ed, did  for  us  in  the  two  centuries  which  follow- 
ed the  Protectorate. 

The  Protector  was  now  installed  with  mod- 
erate state,  and  on  the  next  3d  of  September,  his 
lucky  day,  he  took  the  first  great  step  toward  the 
restoration  of  Constitutional  Government  by  meet- 
ing his  first  Parliament.  That  Parliament  proved 
refractory.  Instead  of  voting  the  necessary  sup- 
plies and  doing  the  business  of  the  country,  its 
members  fell  to  questioning  the  right  of  the  Pro- 
tector. The  answer  to  their  questionings  was 
simple.  If  they  wanted  divine  right,  it  was  by 
the  Protector's  hand  that  God  had  saved  them 
all.  If  they  wanted  human  right,  it  was  by  vir- 
tue of  his  writ  that  they  were  there.  In  the  end 
it  was  found  necessary  to  put  to  each  member  a 
test,  in  the  form  of  an  engagement  to  be  faithful 
to  the  established  government  by  a  single  person 
and  a  parliament.  The  test  was  nothing  more 
than  was  implied  in  the  writ  under  which  each 
member  had  been  elected ;  yet  many  of  the  Re- 
publicans refused  it  and  were  excluded.  Even 
after  this  purging,  the  Parliament  remained  in- 
tractable. It  spent  its  time  in  the  persecution  of 
a  Socinian,  and  showed  a  tendency  to  tamper 
with  the  fundamental  principle  on  which  Crom- 


Cromwell.  99 

well  always  insisted — liberty  of  conscience.  The 
Protector  at  last  dissolved  it,  with  thunder  in  his 
voice  and  on  his  brow ;  and  in  doing  so  he  did 
well. 

He  was  now  driven  again  to  govern  for  a  time 
without  Parliament ;  and  the  Royalist  plots  and 
risings  obliged  him  to  appoint  major-generals. 
But  his  government  was  taking  root.  The  na- 
tion felt  the  beneficence  of  his  administration; 
the  glories  of  its  foreign  policy  touched  its  heart. 
Men  contrasted  them  with  the  ignominy  of  the 
Stuarts,  as  when  the  Stuarts  were  restored  they 
had  reason  to  do  again.  The  tidings  of  Blake's 
victories  were  ringing  through  England  when 
the  Protector  again  met  a  Parliament. 

This  time  nothing  was  to  be  risked.  The 
known  malcontents  were  from  the  first  excluded. 
Their  exclusion,  though  veiled  under  a  legal 
form,  was  an  act  of  arbitrary  power.  The  justifi- 
cation for  it  was,  that  if  these  members  had  been 
allowed  to  take  their  seats,  they  would  have 
done  their  best  to  overturn  the  government;  that, 
if  they  had  overturned  the  government,  they 
would  have  brought  in  not  the  Republic  of 
which  Vane  dreamed,  nor  the  reign  of  the  Saints 
of  which  Harrison  dreamed,  nor  the  Covenanted 
King  and  the  Calvinistic  Church  of  which  the 
Presbyterians  dreamed,  but  the  Stuarts ;  and  that 


ioo  Three  English  Statesmen. 

if  they  had  brought  in  the  Stuarts,  they  would 
have  canceled  the  revolution,  wrecked  the  cause, 
and  set  their  own  heads  on  Temple  Bar. 

After  the  exclusion,  the  Parliament  still  num- 
bered three  hundred  and  sixty  members,  friendly 
in  the  main.  And  now  the  time  was  come  for 
the  great  attempt.  A  long  train  of  wagons 
bore  through  London  streets  the  spoils  and  tro- 
phies of  Blake's  victories  over  Spainv  A  poet 
was  writing — 

"Let  the  brave  generals  divide  that  bough, 
Our  great  Protector  hath  such  wreaths  enow  : 
His  conquering  head  has  no  more  room  for  bays, 
Then  let  it  be  as  the  glad  nation  prays  ; 
Let  the  rich  ore  forthwith  be  melted  down, 
And  the  State  fixed  by  making  him  a  crown  : 
With  ermine  clad  and  purple  let  him  hold 
A  royal  sceptre  made  of  Spanish  gold." 

By  the  series  of  resolutions  called  the  Petition 
and  Advice  the  Protector  was  invited  to  take 
upon  him  the  government  by  a  higher  title,  and 
with  a  second  house,  which  was  to  consist  of 
seventy  members  to  be  named  by  the  chief  mag- 
istrate with  the  consent  of  Parliament.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  most  anxious  deliberation  in  Crom- 
well's life.  He  spoke  himself  of  royalty  with  in- 
difference, as  a  feather  in  the  cap,  the  shining 
bauble  for  crowds  to  kneel  and  gaze  at.  I  am 
ready,  for  my  part,  to  believe  that  a  man  who  has 
done  such  things  in  such  a  cause  may,  by  the 


Cromwell.  101 

grace  of  heaven,  keep  his  heart  above  tinsel.  But 
we  know  why  the  title  of  king  might,  apart  from 
any  love  of  tinsel,  seem  essential  to  his  policy. 
The  lawyers  could  not  get  on  without  it ;  the 
people,  as  they  then  were,  craved  for  it.  It  was 
constitutional,  whereas  that  of  Protector  was  not 
constitutional:  it  saved  persons  adhering  to  the 
king  de  facto  under  the  statute  of  Henry  VII., 
whereas  that  of  Protector  did  not.  But  the  stern 
Republicans  of  the  army  were  resolute  against 
monarchy.  It  was  not  for  a  king  that  they  had 
shed  their  blood.  To  their  opposition  Cromwell 
for  the  present  yielded.  Probably  he  not  only 
yielded  to  it,  but  respected  it.  To  be  turned 
from  his  course  by  fear,  it  has  been  truly  said, 
was  not  a  failing  to  which  he  was  prone.  But 
ardent,  sanguine,  inexhaustible  in  resources  as  he 
was,  he  was  the  victim  of  no  illusions.  He  knew 
the  difference  between  the  difficult  and  the  im- 
possible ;  he  faced  difficulty  without  fear,  and  he 
recognized  impossibility  without  repining,  and 
again  turned  his  mind  steadily  toward  the  future. 

So  Cromwell  mingled  not  with  the  crowd  of. 
kings.  He  wore  no  crown  but  "Worcester's 
laureat  wreath,"  and  the  more  laureat  wreath  of 
Milton's  verse.  Fate  ordained  that  he  should 
stand  in  history  a  chief  of  the  people. 

Part  of  the  Petition  and  Advice  however  was 


IO2  Three  English  Statesmen. 

carried  into  effect.  The  Protectorate  had  been 
elective.  The  Protector  was  now  empowered  to 
name  his  successor.  There  had  hitherto  been 
only  one  House  of  Parliament :  there  were  now 
to  be  two,  and  the  still  half-feudal  instincts  of 
the  nation  were  to  be  indulged  with  a  House  of 
Lords.  This  was  the  first  Parliamentary  settle- 
ment of  the  new  constitution ;  the  Instrument 
of  Government  under  which  the  Protector  had 
hitherto  acted  having  been  framed  as  a  provision- 
al arrangement  by  a  council  of  military  and  po- 
litical chiefs.  To  mark  the  legal  commencement 
of  his  power  the  Protector  was  installed  with 
more  solemnity  than  before,  and  with  ceremonies 
more  resembling  a  coronation,  the  account  of 
which  is  given  us  by  Whitelocke,  who,  though 
no  lover  of  Cromwell,  seems  to  have  been  im- 
pressed with  the  scene.  In  Westminster  Hall, 
under  a  canopy  of  state,  was  placed  a  chair  of 
state  upon  an  ascent  of  two  degrees,  with  seats 
down  the  hall  for  the  parliament,  the  dignitaries 
of  the  law,  the  mayor  and  aldermen  of  London. 
Thither  on  the  26th  of  June,  1657,  went  the  Pro- 
tector with  his  council  of  state,  his  ministers,  his 
gentlemen,  sergeants-at-arms,  officers,  and  heralds. 
His  Highness  standing  under  the  canopy  of  state, 
the  Speaker,  in  the  name  of  the  Parliament,  put 
on  him  a  robe  of  purple  velvet  lined  with  ermine, 


Cromwell.  103 

delivered  to  him  the  Bible,  richly  gilt  and 
bossed,  girt  on  him  the  sword  of  State,  and  put  a 
golden  sceptre  into  his  hand.  The  same  func- 
tionary then  gave  him  the  oath  to  observe  the 
constitution,  with  solemn  good  wishes  for  the 
prosperity  of  his  government.  Mr.  Manton,  the 
chaplain,  next  by  prayer  recommended  the  Pro- 
tector, the  parliament,  the  council,  the  forces  by 
land  and  sea,  the  whole  government  and  people 
of  the  three  nations  to  the  blessing  and  protec- 
tion of  God.  Then  the  people  gave  a  shout  and 
the  trumpets  sounded.  The  Protector  took  his 
seat  in  the  chair  of  State,  with  the  ambassadors 
of  the  friendly  nations  and  the  high  officers  of 
the  Protectorate  round  him ;  and  as  he  did  so 
the  trumpets  sounded  again,  heralds  proclaimed 
the  title  of  his  Highness,  and  the  people  -shouted 
once  more  "  God  save  the  Lord  Protector."  So 
looked  sovereignty  when  for  a  moment  it  emerged 
from  feudalism  and  showed  itself  in  the  aspect  of 
the  modern  time.  At  the  gorgeous  coronation 
of  Napoleon,  some  one  asked  the  Republican 
General  Augereau  whether  any  thing  was  want- 
ing to  the  splendor  of  the  scene  ?  "  Nothing," 
replied  Augereau,  "  but  the  presence  of  the  million 
of  men  who  have  died  to  do  away  with  all  this." 
There  was  not  much  in  Cromwell's  installation 
to  do  away  with  which  any  man  of  sense  had 


IO4  Three  English  Statesmen. 

died.  We  got  "back  afterward  to  the  more  au- 
gust and  venerable  ceremony,  with  the  bishops, 
the  anointings,  the  champion  in  armor,  and  the 
glorious  expense,  which  the  finances  of  the  Pro- 
tectorate could  ill  bear.  At  the  coronation  of 
George  III.,  as  Horace  Walpole  tells  us,  Lord 
Talbot,  the  Lord  Steward,  had  taught  his  horse 
to  back  all  down  the  hall  after  his  rider  had  de- 
livered the  cup  to  the  king;  but  the  too  well- 
trained  animal  insisted  on  backing  into  the  hall 
and  going  all  up  it  with  its  tail  in  the  king's 
face. 

The  second  Parliament  wasted  time  and  vio- 
lated the  Protector's  principles  by  the  persecu- 
tion of  Naylor,  a  poor  victim  of  the  religious 
frenzy  which  had  seized  many  weak  natures  in 
the  voriex  of  a  religious  revolution.  But  it  voted 

O 

supplies,  and  on  the  whole  acted  cordially  with 
the  Protector.  Hope  dawned  on  the  grand  en- 
terprise. 

Its  dawn  was  arrain  overcast.      When  Parlia- 

O 

ment  met  after  the  recess,  it  was  with  the  ex- 
cluded members  restored  to  their  seats,  and  with 
an  Upper  House.  The  Upper  House  was  a  fail- 
ure. An  old  aristocracy  may  be  patched  to  any 
extent,  especially  if  some  freedom  is  allowed  in 
constructing  Norman  pedigrees;  but  to  make  a 
new  one  when  the  age  of  conquest  and  conquer- 


Cromwell.  105 

ing  races  is  past,  is  happily  not  an  easy  thing. 
Cromwell  got  few  men  of  territorial  or  social  con- 
sequence to  sit,  and  he  incurred  many  damaging 
refusals.  He  said  that  he  wanted  something  to 
stand  between  him  and  the  Lower  House,  his 
direct  contests  with  which  were  no  doubt  bring- 
ing a  heavy  strain  upon  his  government.  But  to 
make  up  his  House  of  Lords,  he  had  to  take 
many  of  his  supporters  from  the  Lower  House, 
where  the  great  battle  of  supplies  was  to  be 
fought,  and  probably  to  break  up  the  lead  for 
the  government  there.  The  result  was  that  the 
Lower  House  fell  foul  of  the  Upper,  and  the  ship 
became  unmanageable  once  more.  At  the  same 
time,  and  perhaps  in  consequence  of  the  distress 
of  the  Government,  conspiracies,  both  Royalist 
and  Republican,  had  broken  out  on  the  most  for- 
midable scale.  It  was  necessary  at  once  to  dis- 
miss Parliament,  and  to  deal  with  this  danger. 
And  so  effectually  was  it  dealt  with,  though  at  a 
small  cost  of  blood,  that,  after  this,  the  Royalists 
rose  no  more.  The  hopes  of  that  party,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  shrewdest  judges  in  Europe,  were 
dead  :  and  Charles  Stuart  could  scarcely  obtain 
common  courtesy,  much  less  recognition  or  sup- 
port, from  Mazarin  or  Don  Louis  de  Haro.  Only 
the  Presbyterians  had  the  power  which,  when 

Cromwell  was  gone,  they  used  with  such  happy 

E2 


io6  Three  English  Statesmen. 

results  to  the  nation  and  themselves,  of  setting 
the  Stuarts  again  upon  the  throne. 

In  these  contests  with  refractory  parliaments, 
the  great  soldier  and  statesman  had  to  play  the 
part  of  an  orator.  He  was  too  old  to  learn  a  new 
art.  He  did  not  prepare  his  speeches ;  and  when 
he  was  asked  to  write  down  one  of  them  a  few 
days  after  it  had  been  delivered,  he  declared  that 
he  could  not  remember  a  word  of  it.  Clumsier 
or  more  uncouth  compositions  than  the  reports 
which  have  come  down  to  us,  the  records  of  bad 
oratory  do  not  contain.  The  grammar  is  hope- 
less, the  metaphors  and  confusions  of  metaphor 
most  grotesque  —  "God  kindling  a  seed" — "the 
Lord  pouring  the  nation  from  vessel  to  vessel,  till 
He  poured  it  into  your  lap."  The  last  editor 
only  makes  the  matter  worse  by  his  running 
commentary  of  admiring  ejaculations.  But  the 
speeches  are  not  kings'  speeches.  There  runs 
through  them  all  a  strong  though  turbid  tide  of 
thought.  They  are  the  utterances  of  one  who 
sees  his  object  clearly,  presses  toward  it  earnest- 
ly, and  struggles  to  bear  forward  in  the  same 
course  the  reluctant  wills  and  wavering  intellects 
of  other  men.  The  great  features  of  his  situation, 
the  great  principles  on  which  he  was  acting,  are 
brought  out,  as  M.  Guizot  says,  with  a  breadth 
and  force  which  are  a  strong  proof  of  a  states- 


Cromwell.  107 

nian-like  intellect,  and  not  a  small  proof  perhaps 
of  good  faith.  But  he  pleaded  to  deaf  ears.  It 
is  vain  to  rail  at  those  who  refused  to  listen  to 
him,  and  who  thwarted  him  to  the  end.  They 
were  not  great  men.  They  were  contending, 
many  of  them  at  least,  in  singleness  of  heart,  for 
what  they  believed  to  be  the  good  cause.  They 
might  say  with  truth  that  Cromwell  had  changed ; 
that  the  language  of  the  Revolutionary  Soldier 
was  not  that  of  the  Head  of  the  State ;  that  his 
mind  had  grown  more  comprehensive,  his  vision 
clearer  since  he  had  risen  to  a  higher  point  of 
view  and  into  serener  air :  and,  as  he  had 
changed,  they  might  represent  him  to  themselves 
as  a  renegade  and  a  traitor.  These  misunder- 
standings between  men  who  yesterday  stood  side 
by  side  are  another  mournful  part  of  revolutions. 
We  owe  those  who  resisted  Cromwell  forbear- 
ance and  respect.  So  far  as  they  were  struggling 
for  English  law  against  what  they  believed  to  be 
lawless  power,  we  owe  them  gratitude.  Princi- 
ples are  worth  incomparably  more  than  any  pos- 
sible- benefits  of  any  one  man's  rule.  Yet  the 
conduct  of  these  patriots  brought  ruin  on  all 
they  loved. 

When  Parliament  refused  the  necessary  sup- 
plies, the  Protector  was  compelled  to  levy  the 
old  taxes  by  an  ordinance  in  Council :  but  he 


io8  Three  English  Statesmen. 

did  this  with  manifest  reluctance,  and  with  a 
manifest  desire  to  return  to  Parliamentary  taxa- 
tion, as  well  as  to  Parliamentary  government  in 
other  respects.  The  spoils  of  the  Spanish  gal- 
leons helped  his  finances  for  a  time.  A  less  no- 
ble source  of  supply  was  an  income-tax  of  ten  per 
cent,  levied  on  the  Royalists  after  their  great  re- 
volt. In  that  great  resource,  frugality,  the  gov- 
ernment of  Cromwell  was  rich  ;  considering  what 
it  did,  it  was  the  cheapest  government  England 
ever  had.  But  the  truth  is,  greatness  is  generally 
cheap :  it  is  littleness  aping  greatness  that  is  so 
dear.  The  Protector  offered  to  lay  the  financial 
administration  open  to  the  most  rigorous  inspec- 
tion. He  was  not  afraid,  he  said,  on  that  score 
to  face  the  nation.  He  was  ready,  in  fact,  to  do 
any  thing,  except  to  allow  the  government  to  be 
overturned :  rather  than  that,  he  said,  he  would 
be  rolled  with  infamy  into  his  grave. 

All  this  time  he  had  been  struggling  with  a 
series  of  plots  against  his  power  and  his  life. 
The  ground  on  which  his  tottering  throne  was 
reared  heaved  on  all  sides  with  conspiracy  and 
rebellion.  The  plotters  were  not  only  Royalists 
but  fanatical  Republicans,  leaguing  themselves 
in  their  frenzy  with  Royalists  to  their  own  de- 
struction. To  the  Republicans  Cromwell  be- 
haved as  to  old  friends  estranged.  The  utmost 


Cromwell.  109 

thai  lie  did  was  to  put  them  for  a  time  in  safe 
keeping,  when  they  would  have  laid  desperate 
hands  on  the  life  of  their  own  cause.  He  was 
careful  too  of  their  honor;  and  so  long  as  they 
would  be  quiet,  never  put  to  them  any  oath  or 
test.  With  the  Royalists  he  dealt  rigorously,  as 
old  enemies,  yet  mercifully,  as  all  fearless  natures 
do.  When  they  had  risen  in  arms  against  him, 
he  placed  them  under  the  control  of  the  Major- 
Grenerals,  and  laid  on  them,  not  a  fine  of  the  tenth 
part  of  their  property,  but  an  income-tax  of  ten 
per  cent.  It  is  said  that  this  taxing  of  the  Roy- 
alists was  a  breach  of  the  Act  of  Oblivion.  It  was 
so ;  but  what  was  their  insurrection  ? 

In  the  punishment  of  political  offenses,  Crom- 
well did  his  best  to  return  from  the  revolutionary 
high  courts  of  justice  to  trial  by  jury.  The  first 
case  with  which  he  had  to  deal  was  that  of  ,Lil- 
burn,  an  aimless  and  egotistical  agitator,  though 
otherwise  pure  and  brave,  who  had  returned  from 
exile  merely  to  prevent  the  settlement  of  the  na- 
tion. Lilburn  was  sent  before  a  jury ;  but  the 
jury  being  strong  partisans,  and  the  court  being 
crowded  with  the  friends  of  the  accused,  the  gov- 

/  o 

ernment  failed  to  obtain  a  conviction,  and  was 
driven  to  the  worst  course  of  all — that  of  mixing 

O 

force  with  law,  by  keeping  Lilburn  in  custody 
after  his  acquittal.  The  conspirators  in  Vowell 


1 1  o  Three  English  Statesmen. 

and  Gerrard's  plot,  and  those  in  Slingsby's  plot, 
were  sent  before  a  high  court  of  justice.  But 
Cromwell's  high  court  of  justice  was  not  like  the 
French  revolutionary  tribunal,  or  an  Irish  or  Ja- 
maica court-martial.  It  consisted  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  judges,  including  the  highest  functionaries 
of  the  law,  it  sat  publicly,  proceeded  deliberately, 
and  observed  the  legal  rules  of  evidence :  nor, 
unless  to  murder  the  Protector  and  overturn  the 
government  was  no  offense,  does  the  slightest  sus- 
picion rest  upon  it  of  having  shed  one  drop  of  in- 
nocent blood.  The  Royalists  taken  in  Penrud- 
dock's  rebellion  were  tried  before  juries  in  the 
counties  where  the  rebellion  occurred :  so  little 
known  to  this  military  despot  were  our  present 
theories  of  martial  law.  '  The  daggers  of  the  Roy- 
alists were  always  threatening  the  Protector's  life. 
And  not  their  daggers  only  :  a  proclamation  was 
circulated  in  the  name  of  the  exiled  king,  prom- 
ising great  rewards  and  honors  to  whoever  would 
take  the  usurper  off  with  pistol,  sword,  or  poi- 
son. It  is  commonly  believed  that  his  nerves 
were  completely  shaken  by  the  fear  of  assassina- 
tion ;  but  the  well-known  passage  of  Hume,  de- 
scribing the  Protector's  agonies  of  alarm,  is  a  rhe- 
torical improvement  on  the  passage  in  the  rabidly 
Royalist  work  of  Dr.  Bates,  the  court  physician 
to  Charles  II.,  and  I  believe  the  statement  has  no 


Cromwell.  1 1 1 

trustworthy  foundation.  Cromwell,  of  course, 
took  the  necessary  precautions,  and  as  the  author 
of  "  Killing  no  Murder"  assured  him,  great  pre- 
cautions were  necessary;  but  there  is  nothing  in 
his  bearing  or  in  his  policy  to  the  end  of  his  life 
to  show  that  fear  had  shaken  his  fortitude ;  and 
assuredly  it  did  not  shake  his  clemency.  Of  the 
forty  men  arrested  for  Vowell  and  Gerrard's  plot, 
three  only  were  sent  before  the  high  court  of  jus- 
tice, and  of  those  three  one  was  spared.  In  Slings- 
by's  plot  five  persons  only  suffered,  though  it  was 
a  formidable  conspiracy  to  deliver  Hull  to  the 
Spaniards,  and  at  the  same  time  to  raise  an  insur- 
rection in  London,  which  would  have  filled  the 
city  with  fire  and  blood.  Few  besides  the  actual 
leaders  suffered  death  for  Penruddock's  rebellion, 
though  a  good  many  of  their  followers  were  trans- 
ported. Fear  for  his  government,  though  his  life 
was  in  no  danger,  impelled  Bonaparte  to  murder 
a  Bourbon  prince  who  had  approached  his  frontier. 
Ormond,  Cromwell's  most  formidable,  as  well  as 
his  most  honorable  enemy,  came  to  London  in  dis- 
guise to  get  up  a  plot  against  the  government. 
His  presence  was  detected.  Cromwell  took  Lord 
Broghil,  Ormond's  former  associate,  aside,  and  said 
to  him,  "  If  you  wish  to  do  a  kindness  to  an  old 
friend,  Ormond  is  in  London ;  warn  him  to  be- 
gone."  Those  were  harder  times  than  ours,  and 


H2  Three  English  Statesmen. 

civil  war  begets  recklessness  of  Iminan  life:  but  the 
strongest  man  of  those  times  in  his  true  strength 
has  bequeathed  a  lesson  to  the  emasculate  senti- 
mentalism  which  counterfeits  manliness  by  affect- 
ing sympathy  with  deeds  of  violence  and  blood. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Stuart  princes 
and  their  advisers  were  privy  to  assassination 
plots.  Cromwell  had  threatened  that  if  they 
used  assassins,  he  would  make  it  a  war  of  assas- 
sination. But  he  was  not  a  Stuart  prince,  and 
he  never  degraded  his  nobler  nature  by  putting 
his  threat  in  execution. 

Algernon  Sidney,  stanch  republican  as  he 
was,  told  Burnet  that  the  Protector  had  just  no- 
tions of  public  liberty.  In  one  respect  at  least 
he  had  juster  notions  of  liberty  than  his  parlia- 
ments, for  he  stood  out  against  them  for  freedom 
of  conscience,  and  his  veto  on  acts  of  persecution 
was  one  of  the  powers  which  he  would  never  let 
go.  "  To  save  free  conscience"  was  the  special 
task  to  which  he  had  been  called  by  one  who  un- 
derstood the  interests  of  freedom  of  conscience 
well,  and  he  seems  to  have  performed  that  work 
faithfully  according  to  his  lights,  which  it  is  es- 
pecially necessary,  with  reference  to  this  subject, 
to  bear  in  mind  were  not  those  of  an  inspired 
hero,  but  those  of  an  uninspired  Puritan  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  sitting  at  the  feet  of  Hugh 


Cromwell.  113 

Peters  and  in  thralldom  to  Hugh  Peters's  su- 
perstitions, believing  in  the  necessity  of  Dog- 
ma, and  believing,  we  may  be  quite  sure,  in 
witchcraft.  Theoretically,  of  course,  his  tolera- 
tion embraced  only  Protestants  and  Trinitari- 
ans, all  sects  of  whom  he  desired  to  see  not  only 
at  peace  with  each  other,  but  united,  in  spite  of 
those  secondary  differences  which  he  deemed  of 
no  importance  compared  with  the  vital  principles 
of  the  Christian  faith.  But  the  greatness  of  his 
nature  carried  him  beyond  his  theory,  and  in  all 
cases  we  find  him  practically  the  enemy  of  perse- 
cution. He  snatched  Biddle,  the  Socinian,  from 
the  fangs  of  Parliament,  placed  him  in  mild  con- 
finement, and,  so  soon  as  it  was  safe,  set  him  free. 
He  tried  to  procure  the  formal  re-admission  of 
the  Jews  to  England,  from  which  they  had  been 
banished  since  the  time  of  Edward  I.,  and,  fail- 
ing in  this,  he  protected  individual  Jews  who  set- 
tled in  this  country.  He  left  the  Roman  Cath- 
olics practically  unmolested  in  conscience  and  in 
their  private  worship,  while  they  were  burning 
Protestants  alive  wherever  they  had  the  power, 
though  he  could  not  have  permitted  the  open  cel- 
ebration of  the  mass  without  causing  an  out- 
break among  the  people.  The  persecution  of 
Catholic  priests,  which  had  been  going  on  during 
the  latter  days  of  the  Parliament,  soon  abated 


1 1 4  Three  English  Statesmen. 

when  he  became  Protector.  At  one  time  he 
launched  some  fierce  ordinances  both  against  the 
Catholics  and  the  Anglicans,  not  on  account  of 
their  religious  opinions  but  on  account  of  their 
political  plots  and  insurrections.  Generally  the 
Anglicans  enjoyed  under  him  as  much  liberty  as 
they  could  expect,  when  the  foot  of  Laud  had 
but  just  been  taken  from  the  neck  of  the  nation. 
All  sects,  in  fact,  even  the  most  unpopular,  even 
those  which  the  Protector  himself  most  hated 
and  had  the  bitterest  reason  to  hate  as  the  nurs- 
eries not  only  of  his  political  opponents  but  of 
the  assassins  who  sought  his  life,  provided  they 
would  only  abstain  from  active  attempts  to  over- 
throw the  government,  were  sure  of  obtaining 
under  that  government  the  utmost  measure  of 
freedom  which  could  be  expected  from  the  most 
liberal  spirit  of  that  age.  The  Presbyterians, 
who  had  persecuted  Cromwell  with  the  most  un- 
relenting malignity,  were  never  persecuted  by 
him.  On  the  contrary,  his  scheme  of  church 
polity  comprehended  them,  and  he  was  most  de- 
sirous that  they  should  come  in.  It  was  in  this 
matter  of  freedom  of  conscience  that  the  man 
was  most  before  his  age,  and  that  the  most  mo- 
mentous issues  hung  upon  his  life :  issues  how 
momentous  we  see  from  the  religious  perplexity 
and  distress  into  which,  partly  by  the  reversal 


Cromwell.  115 

of  his  policy,  we  have  been  brought.  Reasons 
have  been  already  given  for  believing  that  this 
was  in  him,  not  the  toleration  of  indifference,  but 
the  real  toleration  of  a  man  of  strong  conviction. 
Much  as  his  mind  had  grown  in  stature,  he  re- 
mained to  the  last  open  to  the  impressions  even 
of  very  fanatical  preachers  of  the  doctrines  which 
had  been  the  spring  of  his  own  spiritual  life. 
He  liked  to  commune  with  such  enthusiasts  as 
Foxe.  This  may  have  been,  and  no  doubt  was, 
partly  policy :  it  was  to  persecuted  sectaries  that 
the  government  of  the  Independent  chief  es- 
pecially appealed.  But  great  simplicity  of  relig- 
ious feeling  is  compatible  with  high  intellect : 
and,  after  all,  the  enthusiasts,  who,  whenever  the 
spirit  of  the  world  is  deeply  moved,  come  forth 
preaching  a  more  equal  state  of  society,  and  a 
brotherhood  of  man,  are  they  the  people  whom 
the  profoundest  political  philosophy  would  most 
despise?  Are  they  mere  dreamers,  or  do  they 
dream  of  that  which  is  to  come  ? 

When  we  consider  that  the  Protector's  reign 
lasted  but  five  years  and  that  it  was  a  constant 
struggle  for  the  existence  of  his  government 
and  his  own  life,  and  when  we  think  what  he 
achieved,  we  must  allow  that  his  administration 
was  as  high  a  proof  of  practical  capacity  as  was 
ever  given  by  man.  Or  rather,  it  was  as  high  a 


1 1 6  Three  English  Statesmen. 

proof  as  ever  was  given  of  the  power  of  a  nation 
when,  in  a  moment  of  extraordinary  exaltation, 
the  nation  finds  a  worthy  organ  in  its  chief. 

In  the  department  of  justice,  the  Protector  put 
upon  the  bench  the  best  judges  probably  that 
England  had  ever  had,  and  at  their  head  Sir 
Matthew  Hale.  He  made  strenuous  efforts  to  re- 
form those  monstrous  delays  and  abuses  of  the 
Court  of  Chancery,  which  afterward  insulted  rea- 
son and  sullied  public  justice  for  nearly  two 
hundred  years.  He  wished  to  reform  the  crim- 
inal law,  which  the  Tudor  despots  and  their  aris- 
tocratic parliaments  had  made  a  code  of  blood. 
"  It  was  a  scandalous  thing,"  he  said,  "  that  a 
man  should  be  hanged  for  a  theft  of  twelvepence 
or  sixpence  when  greater  crimes  went  unpunish- 
ed." A  man  of  the  people,  he  did  not  share  the 
aristocratic  recklessness  of  plebeian  blood,  which 
had  lavished,  and  which  when  he  was  gone  lav- 
ished still  more,  capital  punishment  for  vulgar 
offenses,  while  the  worse  offenses  of  the  privi- 
leged class  went  free.  Had  he  succeeded,  the 
work  of  Komilly  would  have  been  performed,  in 
part  at  least,  two  centuries  before. 

Every  thing  was  done  to  foster  commerce,  and 
that  interest  seems  at  this  time  to  have  received 
a  permanent  impulse,  which  bore  it  prosperously 
onward  even  through  the  maladministration 


Cromwell.  117 

and  the  naval  disasters  of  the  Restoration.  A 
Committee  of  Trade  was  formed,  and  "White- 
locke,  who  was  one  of  its  members,  says  that  this 
was  an  object  on  which  the  Protector's  heart  was 
greatly  set.  Other  than  territorial  interests  were 
now  held  to  deserve  care.  If  on  the  subject  of 
navigation  laws  Cromwell  was  a  Protectionist,  so 
on  the  same  subject  was  Adam  Smith.  Slowly 
the  light  dawns  even  on  the  highest  peaks  of 
thought. 

A  navy  had  been  created  by  the  Parliament 
in  the  war  with  the  Dutch ;  when  Vane,  at  the 
head  of  the  Admiralty,  had  shown  that  energy, 
purity,  and  public  spirit,  added  to  intellect,  will 
make  a  great  administrator,  even  of  a  man  who 
has  not  passed  his  life  in  office.  But  the  Pro- 
tector fostered  that  navy  so  well  that  if  Blake  is 
the  father  of  our  naval  tactics,  Cromwell  is  the 
father  of  our  naval  greatness. 

The  army,  which  found  no  equal  in  the 
field,  and  on  whose  invincible  prowess  Clarendon 
could  not  help  dilating  when  it  was  disbanded 
by  Charles  II.,  was  in  discipline  equally  without 
a  peer.  Though  the  Protector's  power  rested  on 
the  soldiery,  their  license,  if  ever  it  broke  out, 
was  rigorously  repressed.  In  this  so-called  mili- 
tary government,  no  soldier  was  above  the  law. 
The  swaggering  truculence  of  the  praetorian  to- 


1 1 8  Three  English  Statesmen. 

ward  fellow-citizens  has  no  connection  with  the 
military  qualities  which  are  the  pledges  of  victo- 
ry over  the  enemy  in  the  field. 

Among  the  Chancellors  of  the  University  of 
Oxford,  the  name  of  Oliver  stands  a  startling  re- 
ality in  a  line  of  stately  buckram.  Cromwell 
was  not,  like  Pym  and  Hampden,  highly  culti- 
vated ;  but  he  had  been  bred  at  a  classical  school 
and  at  Cambridge ;  and,  what  was  of  more  conse- 
quence, he  had  been  trained  intellectually  by 
converse  with  the  highest  intellects  on  the  high- 
est subjects  of  the  time.  No  brutal  soldier,  no 
drill-sergeant,  was  he ;  nor  does  his  policy  as  a 
democratic  chief  afford  any  reason  for  believing 
that  democracy  will  be  the  enemy  of  culture. 
Though  unlearned  himself,  he  fostered  learning ; 
he  saved  and  protected  the  Universities  of  Ox- 
ford and  Cambridge.  He  founded  the  Universi- 
ty of  Durham.  Learned  men  and  men  of  intel- 
lect of  the  opinions  most  opposed  to  his  own, 
studied  and  wrote  in  security  beneath  his  rule. 
Turn  where  you  will,  you  find  him,  when  he  is 
left  to  himself,  sympathizing  with  what  is  noble, 
and  a  magnanimous  friend  to  freedom.  Alone 

O 

of  English  princes,  he  set  himself  to  draw  merit 
and  promise  from  the  Universities  into  the  serv- 
ice of  the  State.  The  men  whom  he  placed  at 
the  head  of  Oxford  were  Puritans  of  course,  but 


•  Cromwell.  119 

they  were  learned  men  and  ruled  well ;  and  the 
University  improved  in  nothing,  except  in  politi- 
cal and  religious  principles,  when  they  were  gone. 

Cromwell's  church  reform,  as  well  as  his  uni- 
versity reform,  was  Puritan,  but  it  was  compre- 
hensive. It  was  directed  more  to  piety  than 
doctrine,  and  it  imposed  no  tests.  It  left  an 
Established  Church ;  but  it  enlarged  the  liber- 
ties of  that  Church  to  the  utmost  extent  possible 
to  the  reformer,  or  even  conceivable  by  his  mind ; 
and  aimed  at  making  the  Establishment  national 
by  taking  in  the  whole  nation,  not  by  crushing 
the  nation  into  a  sect.  It  gave  the  people  good 
ministers.  Not  only  was  it  the  most  liberal  set- 
tlement of  its  time,  but  nothing  so  liberal  follow- 
ed for  ages  afterward.  Baxter,  who  was  no  friend 
of  Cromwell's,  allows  that  the  Protector's  com- 
missioners "  put  in  able  and  serious  preachers, 
who  lived  a  godly  life,  of  what  tolerable  opinion 
soever  they  were,  so  that  many  thousands  of  souls 
blessed  God."  And  thus  the  people  gained  that 
for  which  Cromwell  himself  had  taken  arms,  and 
which  in  his  eyes  was  the  great  object  of  the 
civil  war. 

The  conquest  of  Scotland  was  followed  by  an 
incorporating  union.  Thus  was  achieved  what, 
down  to  that  time,  had  been  the  greatest  object 
of  English  policy.  Representatives  of  Scotland 


I2O  Three  English  Statesmen. 

were  called  to  the  Protector's  Parliaments.  The 
country  was  necessarily  occupied  for  some  time 
by  an  army :  but  that  army  did  not  insult  or  op- 
press the  people.  As  Independents,  no  doubt 
they  paid  scanty  respect  to  the  divine  right  of 
the  Kirk.  They  sometimes  took  the  word  of  God 
out  of  His  minister's  mouth,  and  sat  in  derision 
on  the  stool  of  repentance.  In  a  few  cases,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  they  guided  Scottish  maidens  in 
paths  which  did  not  lead  to  heaven.  But  their 
conduct  generally  seems  to  have  been  better  than 
that  of  any  other  soldiers  in  a  conquered  coun- 
try. So  far  is  religious  fanaticism  from  being 
the  root  of  all  vice  in  man.  The  heritable  juris- 
dictions, with  their  oppressive  absurdities,  were 
swept  away,  and  Scotch  law  courts,  the  greatest 
nests  of  corruption  in  the  legal  world,  saw  for  a 
time  the  unwonted  face  of  justice.  "  Deil  think 
them,  a  ween  kinless  loons,"  was  the  pensive  re- 
flection of  an  old  Scotch  jobber.  These  were 
fine  days  everywhere  for  kinless  loons.  "  We 
count  those  years,"  says  Burnet,  "  years  of  great 
prosperity."  The  patriot  statesmen  of  the  Resto- 
ration dissolved  the  Union,  and  undid  the  Pro- 
tector's work,  that  they  might  exercise  in  Scot- 
land a  provincial  despotism,  unchecked  even  by 
a  Parliament  of  Cavaliers. 

The    Irish   talk    of   the    curse   of    Cromwell. 


Cromwell.  121 

They  ought  rather  to  talk  of  the  curse  of  the 
Croinwellians.  The  real  oppressors  were  the 
military  adventurers  and  the  State  creditors,  to 
whom  the  Long  Parliament  had  assigned  as  pay- 
ment the  confiscated  lands  of  the  Irish  land- 
owners implicated  in  the  rebellion.  That  Crom- 
well intended  to  exterminate  the  Irish  is  an  ex- 
ploded fable :  from  the  moment  when  the  rebel- 
lion was  suppressed,  he  bade  the  mass  of  the 
Irish  people  dwell  in  security  and  peace.  His 
rule  unhappily  was  that '  of  a  Puritan  over  Pa- 
pists, of  an  Anglo-Saxon  conqueror  over  conquer- 
ed Celts,  and  this  in  an  age  when  the  highest 
minds  were  almost  inevitably  victims  to  preju- 
dices of  religion  and  race  of  which  the  lowest 
minds  ought  now  to  be  ashamed ;  but  still  it  was 
the  best  government  that  Ireland  had  ever  had. 
By  uniting  Ireland  to  England  and  calling  her 
representatives  to  his  parliaments  he  brought  her 
under  imperial  rule,  the  surest  protection  against 
local  tyranny  that  he  could  give.  His  policy  in 
this  respect  was  ratified  after  another  century 
and  half  of  disunion  and  ascendancy  by  Pitt,  or 
rather  by  those  calamities  which  great  men  avert, 
but  which  to  ordinary  men  are  the  only  teachers 
of  wisdom.  The  chiefs  of  the  Irish  government 
and  law  were  appointed  not  by  a  Dublin  faction, 

but  by  him.     He  sent  over  an  excellent  viceroy 

F 


122  Three  English  Statesmen. 

in  the  person  of  his  son  Henry,  to  whom  he  gave 
counsels  of  gentleness  and  moderation ;  and  with 
complaints  of  the  wrongs  done  to  the  Irish  people 
we  find  mingled  the  mention  of  the  Protector's 
name  as  that  of  a  power  (though,  no  doubt,  he 
was  too  distant  a  power)  of  justice.  He  even  saw 
with  a  statesman's  eye  what  Ireland  from  its  very 
backwardness  and  unsettlenieut  might  be  made  to 
do  for  England.  In  a  conversation  with  Ludlow, 
after  dwelling  on  the  delays  and  expensiveness 
of  English  law,  he  added  that  Cooke,  the  Chief- 
Justice  whom  he  had  sent  to  Ireland,  determined 
more  causes  in  a  week  than  Westminster  Hall  in 
a  year.  "  Ireland,"  he  went  on  to  say,  "  is  a  clean 
paper,  and  capable  of  being  governed  by  such 
laws  as  shall  be  found  most  agreeable  to  justice, 
and  these  may  be  so  administered  there  as  to  af- 
ford a  good  precedent  to  England  itself,  where, 
when  we  shall  once  perceive  that  property  may 
be  preserved  at  so  easy  and  cheap  a  rate,  we 
shall  never  allow  ourselves  to  be  cheated  and 
abused  as  we  have  been."  It  is  not  in  the  matter 
of  conveyancing  only  that  Ireland  is  a  clean  pa- 
per, where  such  laws  may  be  tried  as  shall  be 
most  agreeable  to  justice  and  good  precedents  es- 
tablished for  England  herself. 

Of  Cromwell's  colonial  policy  the  records  must 
be  sought  in  colonial  archives.     The  American 


Cromwell.  123 

historian,  Mr.  Bancroft,  says :  "  Cromwell  de- 
clared himself  truly  ready  to  serve  the  brethren 
and  the  churches  in  New  England.  The  declara- 
tion was  sincere.  The  people  of  New  England 
were  ever  sure  that  Cromwell  would  listen  to 
their  requests  and  would  take  an  interest  in  all 
the  details  of  their  condition.  He  left  them  in- 
dependence and  favored  their  trade.  When  his 
arms  had  made  the  conquest  of  Jamaica  he  offer- 
ed them  the  island,  with  the  promise  of  all  the 
wealth  which  the  tropical  climate  pours  into  the 
lap  of  industry,  and  though  they  frequently 
thwarted  his  views  they  never  forfeited  his  re- 
gard." "  English  history,"  proceeds  Mr.  Ban- 
croft, "  must  judge  of  Cromwell  by  his  influence 
on  the  institutions  of  England.  The  American 
colonies  remember  the  years  of  his  power  as  the 
period  when  British  sovereignty  was,  for  them, 
free  from  rapacity,  intolerance,  and  oppression. 
He  may  be  called  the  benefactor  of  the  English 
in  America,  for  he  left  them  to  enjoy  unshackled 
the  benevolence  of  Providence,  the  freedom  of 
industry,  of  commerce,  of  religion,  and  of  govern- 
ment." Cromwell  and  Chatham,  these  are  the 
two  English  statesmen  the  memory  of  wrhose 
sympathy  America  still  cherishes;  and  were 
Cromwell  and  Chatham  "great  un-Englishmen" 
and  traitors  to  their  country  ? 


124  77irce  English  Statesmen. 

But  it  is  to  the  foreign  policy  of  Cromwell 
that  his  country,  even  when  she  honored  his  name 
least,  has  always  looked  back  with  a  wistful  eye. 
Unhappily  it  is  a  policy  apt  not  only  to  be  ad- 
mired but  to  be  travestied  by  wretched  imitators 
when  the  age  for  it  is  past.  Such  imitations  are 
the  mockery  and  the  bane  of  greatness.  These 
are  not  the  days  of  commercial  monopoly ;  Spain 
is  not  now  excluding  the  trade  of  all  nations 
from  the  western  waters,  and  forcing  them  to 
open  the  high-road  of  mercantile  enterprise  by 
arms;  nor  is  Europe  now  divided  between  Ca- 
tholicism and  Protestantism,  waging  against  each 
other  internecine  war.  The  intense  spirit  of  nar- 
row nationality  produced  by  the  disruption  of 
Christendom  has  now  begun  to  give  place  again, 
if  not  to  a  new  Christendom,  at  least  to  some- 
thing like  a  community  of  nations.  Cromwell's 
was  a  war  policy ;  and  so  far  as  it  was  a  war 
policy,  it  was  a  bad  policy,  if  Christianity  be 
true.  But  it  was  not  a  policy  of  mere  aggran- 
dizement. It  was  the  companionship  of  a  cause,  a 
cause  now  out  of  date,  but  the  best,  the  purest, 
and  the  loftiest  which  the  chief  of  Puritanism 
knew.  Why  did  Cromwell  league  with  France 
against  Spain  when  the  power  of  Spain  was  de- 
clining, when  that  of  France  was  on  the  point  of 
rising  to  a  height  which  threatened  the  liberty 


Cromwell.  125 

of  all  nations?  The  answer  is — first,  that  the 
decline  of  Spain  was  scarcely  yet  visible,  even  to 
the  keenest  eye;  the  vast  dependencies,  which 
we  know  now  to  have  been  one  cause  of  her  de- 
cay, were  still  thought  to  be  the  pillars  of  her 
towering  greatness :  secondly,  that  if  Cromwell's 
dynasty  had  endured,  the  France  of  Louis  XIV. 
would  not  have  become  the  tyrant  of  Europe,  for 
that  which  made  her  so  was  the  prostration  of 
England  under  the  feet  of  the  French  king,  and 
this  was  the  work  of  the  Restoration :  but,  third- 
ly, that  Spain  was  the  power  of  persecuting  Ca- 
tholicism, and  that  France,  under  Mazarin, 
though  Catholic,  was  tolerant  compared  with 
Spain.  To  form  a  great  Protestant  league,  and 
put  England  at  its  head  again,  was  a  policy 
which,  unlike  that  of  modern  diplomatists,  all  the 
nation  could  understand,  which  carried  the  heart 
of  the  nation  with  it,  and  had  the  moral  forces, 
as  well  as  arms,  upon  its  side.  The  Protector 
stepped  into  the  place  of  Gustavus  Adolphus,  as 
the  head  of  Protestant  Christendom.  The  first 
embassy  which  he  sent  was  to  the  daughter  of 
Gustavus;  and  Christina,  before  the  madness 
which  mingled  with  the  heroic  blood  of  Vasa 
had  made  her  its  prey,  knew  and  acknowledged 
her  father's  heir.  Her  master  of  the  ceremonies 
was  not  so  kind ;  but  Whitelocke  made  his  entry 


126  Three  English  Statesmen. 

into  the  Swedish  capital  in  a  snow-storm,  and  it 
was  a  hard  trial  for  a  master  of  the  ceremonies  to 
stand  bare-headed  in  a  snow-storm  bowing  to  the 
ambassador  of  a  regicide  republic.  A  policy  of 
mere  aggrandizement,  without  the  champion- 
ship of  a  cause,  is  not  a  Cromwellian  policy,  nor 
are  its  authors  the  heirs  of  Cromwell.  Their, 
meanness  stands  contrasted  with  the  majesty  of 
the  Protector.  We  have  seen  that,  according  to 
Mr.  Bancroft,  Cromwell  offered  Jamaica  to  the 
colonists  of  New  England;  and  if  he  annexed 
Dunkirk,  it  was  in  those  ports  that,  within  the 
memory  of  living  men,  Parma  had  mustered  his 
army  of  invasion  to  be  convoyed  by  the  Arma- 
da. Cromwell  would  have  made  England  the 
head  at  once  of  Protestantism  and  of  Christen- 
dom. As  chief  of  Christendom,  he  chastised  the 
pirates  of  Tunis  and  Algiers,  then  the  terror  of 
Christian  mariners  on  all  seas.  At  home  he  was 
struggling  for  his  government  and  his  life  with  a 
swarm  of  enemies ;  abroad,  under  his  outstretch- 
ed arm, .  the  Protestants  of  France  and  Savoy 
worshiped  God  in  peace.  I  am  not  an  adhe- 
rent of  non-intervention,  if  it  means  that  En- 
gland is  to  have  no  sympathies,  that  she  is  never 
to  interpose  for  the  defense  of  right  or  for  the 
redress  of  wrens;.  I  believe  that  when  she  is 

O 

again  a  united  nation,  though  she  will  not  med- 


Cromwell.  127 

die  or  bluster,  she  will  make  herself  felt  in  the 
world  once  more.  Till  she  is  united,  no  doubt 
she  must  remain  a  nullity  in  Europe  :  no  foreign 
minister  can  act  with  effect,  except  as  the  organ 
of  the  nation  and  with  the  nation  at  his  back. 
The  case  of  the  Protestants  of  Savoy  stirred  the 
Protector's  soul  from  its  very  depths :  his  feel- 
ings were  expressed  by  the  pen  of  Milton ;  and 
surely  never  did  such  a  secretary  serve  such  a 
prince  in  such  a  cause.  Cromwell  did  not  send 
vaporing  dispatches;  he  interposed  effectually, 
and  right  was  done.  He  talked  of  making  the 
name  of  an  Englishman  as  respected  as  that  of  a 
Roman  in  a  strain  suited  to  those  days,  not  suit- 
ed to  ours.  But  he  did  not  seek  to  win  respect 
for  the  English  name  by  ignoble  swagger,  or  by 
trampling  on  the  weak.  He  spared  the  dignity 
even  of  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  though  if  the  Duke 
had  refused  justice,  he  would  have  struck  him  to 
the  dust. 

The  part  of  a  conqueror,  which  Europe  expect- 
ed that  Cromwell  would  assume  in  his- own  per- 
son, his  good  sense  at  once  renounced:  and  on 
the  evening  of  Worcester  he  sheathed  his  sword 
forever.  Mr.  Hallam,  who  was  infected  with  the 
Whig  worship  of  Napoleon,  speaks  of  his  idol  as 
the  child  of  philosophy  and  of  enlightenment,  and 
contrasts  him  with  Cromwell,  who,  he  says,  "  had 


128  Three  English  Statesmen. 

sucked  the  dresrs  of  a  besotted  fanaticism."     I 

O 

find  it  difficult  to  conceive  any  fanaticism  either 
so  "besotted  or  so  cruel  as  that  which  leads  a  man 
to  sacrifice  the  lives  of  millions  and  the  happiness 
of  hundreds  of  millions  to  his  own  "  star." 

"  Cromwell,"  says  Burnet,  "  studied  to  seek  out 
able  and  honest  men  and  to  employ  them,  and  so 
having  heard  that  my  father  had  a  very  good  rep- 
utation in  Scotland  for  piety  and  integrity,  though 
he  knew  him  to  be  a  Royalist,  he  sent  to  him  de- 
siring him  to  accept  a  judge's  place,  and  do  justice 
in  his  own  country,  hoping  only  that  he  would 
not  act  against  his  government ;  but  he  would 
not  press  him  to  subscribe  or  swear  to  it."  This 
man  had  indeed  a  royal  eye  for  merit  and  a  royal 
heart  to  advance  it  in  the  state.  Nor  was  he  too 
nice  in  scrutinizing  the  opinions  of  able  men,  nor, 
so  long  as  they  served  England  well,  did  he  too 
curiously  inquire  how  they  would  serve  him. 
Here  again  he  stands  contrasted  with  Bonaparte, 
whose  first  thought  in  advancing  men  was  their 
subserviency  to  himself,  who  even  avoided  pro- 
moting officers  of  the  artillery,  because  that 
service  had  the  character  of  being  republican. 
There  is  no  pledge  of  greatness  so  rare,  so  deci- 
sive, or  so  noble  as  the  choice  of  associates  who 
will  not  be  tools.  Blake  was  a  Republican. 
Lockhart,  the  chief  instrument  of  the  Protector's 


Cromwell.  129 

foreign  policy  and  the  first  diplomatist  of  the 
day,  was  an  old  Royalist,  whose  value  Cromwell 
had  discerned.  He  was  employed  again  as  am- 
bassador at  Paris  under  Charles  II.,  and  still 
showed  something  of  the  spirit  of  the  Protector- 
ate in  altered  times.  The  King  of  France  once 
produced  a  private  letter  from  Charles,  obtained 
by  corrupt  influence  and  contrary  to  Lockhart's 
public  instructions.  "  Sire,"  said  Lockharfc,  "  the 
King  of  England  speaks  to  your  majesty  only 
through  me."  Sir  Matthew  Hale  had  been  coun- 
sel to  Strafford  and  the  king :  and  he  well  justi- 
fied the  Protector's  choice  by  boldly  braving  the 
wrath  of  the  Protector  himself,  who,  tried  beyond 
endurance  by  the  resistance  to  the  establishment 
of  his  government,  had  been  betrayed  into  one  of 
those  brief  outbreaks  of  arbitrary  violence  which, 
though  culpable  in  themselves,  illustrated  the 
more  signally  his  general  desire  to  govern  under 
the  law.  Royal  natures,  even  on  a  throne,  love 
simplicity  of  life.  The  Protector  kept  such  state 
as  became  the  head  of  a  great  nation,  but  it  was 
a  modest  state,  unlike  the  tawdry  pageantry  of 
the  court  of  Bonaparte.  A  man  of  little  refine- 
ment and  accustomed  to  the  comradeship  of  the 
camp,  Cromwell  in  private  was  apt  to  relieve  his 
burdened  mind  with  rude  humor,  boisterous  mer- 
riment, and  even  coarse  practical  jokes.  But 

F  2 
X 


130  Three  English  Statesmen. 

when  he  received  foreign  ambassadors,  he  knew 
how  to  show  himself  the  head  of  a  great  nation 
and  the  peer  of  kings.  A  leading  part  of  his  en- 
tertainments was  music,  of  which  he  was  very 
fond.  The  court  was  the  first  household  in  En- 
gland, and,  as  enemies  confessed,  a  good  pattern 
to  the  others,  let  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  in  her  jealousy 
of  the  Cromwell  women,  say  what  she  will. 
Whitehall  was  the  scene  of  work.  But  some- 
times the  Protector  shuffled  off  that  terrible  coil 
of  business  and  anxiety,  and  his  life-guards  waited 
to  escort  him  (their  escort  was  no  needless  pa- 
geantry) in  his  ride  to  Hampton  Court.  There 
he  refreshed  his  soul  with  quiet  and  country  air. 
Thither  an  organ  had  been  brought  from  the 
chapel  of  Magdalen  College  at  Oxford,  to  chase 
away  for  an  hour  the  throng  of  cares.  But  the 
Protector's  chief  comfort  and  delight  was  in  his 
family,  to  which  through  all  the  chances  and 
changes  of  his  life,  in  trial  alike  and  in  victory, 
his  heart  had  turned.  They  were'  all  gathered 
round  him  in  the  hour  of  his  greatness  and  of  his 
peril,  and  remained  bound  by  strong  affection  to 
him  and  to  each  other.  One  was  missing,  the 
eldest  son,  Oliver,  who  had  fallen  in  battle  for  the 
cause,  and  whose  image,  as  we  know  from  Crom- 
well's last  utterances,  never  left  his  father's  heart. 
Among  the  rest  the  Protector's  mother,  ninety 


Cromwell.  131 

years  old,  was  brought  to  a  scene  strange  to  her 
and  in  which  she  had  little  comfort,  for  every  re- 
port of  a  gun  she  heard  seemed  to  her  her  son's 
death,  and  she  could  not  bear  to  pass  a  day  with- 
out seeing  him  with  her  own  eyes.  We  may 
trust  the  brief  account  of  her  end  which  is  found 
among  the  dry  state  papers  of  the  unimaginative 
Thurloe  : — "  My  Lord  Protector's  mother,  ninety- 
four  years  old,  died  last  night.  A  little  before 
her  death  she  gave  my  lord  her  blessing  in  these 
words :  '  The  Lord  cause  His  face  to  shine  upon 
you  and  comfort  you  in  all  your  adversities,  and 
enable  you  to  do  great  things  for  the  glory  of 
your  most  High  God,  and  to  be  a  relief  unto  His 
people.  My  dear  son,  I  leave  my  heart  with  thee. 
A  good  night.' '' 

I  have  estimated  Cromwell  highly.  I  see  no 
reason  why  his  nation  in  his  age  should  not  in  the 
terrible  but  fruitful  throes  of  a  revolution  have 
brought  forth  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  sons  of 
men.  "  A  larger  soul  never  dwelt  in  a  house  of 
clay,"  said  one  who  had  been  much  about  his  per- 
son, after  his  death,  when  flattery  was  mute. 
His  greatness  is  not  to  be  compared  to  that  of  con- 
querors. Ten  years  more  of  Alexander  and  we 
should  have  had  ten  more  satrapies.  Ten  years 
more  of  Napoleon  and  we  should  have  had  ten 
more  conquests  at  once  profligate  and  insensate, 


132  Three  English  Statesmen. 

civilization  put  back  ten  degrees  more,  the  barba- 
rous war  spirit  made  ten  degrees  more  powerful  in 
the  world.  Ten  years  more  of  Cromwell  and  the 
history  of  England  and  of  Europe  might  have 
been  changed.  In  England  we  should  have  had 
no  revival  of  the  absolutist  and  Romanizing  mon- 
archy of  the  Stuarts ;  no  resurrection  of  the  Cav- 
alier party  under  the  name  of  Tories ;  no  waste  of 
the  nation  and  disturbance  of  its  progress  by  the 
renewal  of  that  barren  struggle;  no  restoration 
of  the  hierarchy ;  and  if  an  hereditary  House  of 
Lords,  one  at  all  events  that  could  not  have  fan- 
cied itself  Norman,  and  must  almost  inevitably 
have  assumed  more  of  the  character  of  a  national 
Senate.  In  Europe,  there  would  have  been  no 
domination  of  Louis  XIV. ;  no  extermination  of 
French  Protestantism ;  probably  no  such  crisis  as 
that  of  the  French  Revolution. 

And  now  the  Protector's  foot  was  on  the  thresh- 
old of  success.  His  glory,  the  excellence  of  his 
administration,  his  personal  dignity  and  virtues 
were  founding  his  government  in  the  allegiance  of 
the  people.  The  friends  of  order  were  beginning 
to  perceive  that  their  best  chance  of  order  lay  in 
giving  stability  to  his  throne.  Some  of  the  great 
families,  acting  on  this  view,  had  connected  them- 
selves by  marriage  with  his  house.  His  finances 
were  embarrassed ;  but  he  was  about  again  to 


Cromwell.  133 

meet  a  Parliament  which  would  probably  have 
voted  him  supplies  and  concurred  with  him  in 
settling:  the  constitution.  His  foot  was  on  the 

o 

threshold  of  success ;  but  on  the  threshold  of  suc- 
cess stood  Death.  It  was  death  in  a  strange  form 
for  him :  for  after  all  his  battles  and  storms  and 
all  the  plots  of  assassins  against  his  life,  this  ter- 
rible chief  died  of  grief  at  the  loss  of  his  favorite 
daughter  and  of  watching  at  her  side. 

Up  that  steep  and  slippery  path  of  worldly 
greatness,  so  dangerous  to  the  simplicity  of  faith 
and  virtue,  the  religious  farmer  of  Huntingdon- 
shire had  wandered  far  away  from  the  Puritanism 
of  his  youth.  He  felt  it,  and  when  his  end  was 
near  he  asked  his  chaplain  whether  those  who 
had  once  been  in  a  state  of  grace  could  fall  from 
it.  He  was  assured  that  they  could  not.  Then 
he  said,  "  I  am  saved,  for  I  am  sure  that  I  was 
once  in  a  state  of  grace."  The  Calvinistic  formula 
has  become  obsolete  for  most  of  us :  but  we  may 
still  trust  that  he  who  has  once  sincerely  devoted 
himself  to  God's  service  is  not  often  allowed  to 
become  an  enemy  of  God. 

At  the  time  of  his  installation,  the  Protector 
had  executed  the  power  given  him  by  Parliament 
of  naming  a  successor.  He  had  sealed  up  the  pa- 
per and  addressed  it  to  Thurloe,  but  had  kept 
both  the  paper  and  its  secret  to  himself.  In  his 


134  Three  English  Statesmen. 

last  illness,  at  Hampton  Court,  lie  sent  to  London 
for  the  paper,  telling  the  messenger  that  it  was 
on  his  study-table  at  Whitehall;  but  the  paper 
could  not  be  found.  Whose  name  did  it  contain  ? 
I  doubt  not,  that  of  Richard  Cromwell.  Perhaps 
the  Protector's  memory  had  failed  him,  and  he 
had  really  destroyed  the  paper,  still  expecting 
that  Richard  would  succeed  not  as  Protector  un- 
der the  power  of  nomination,  but  by  act  of  Par- 
liament as  hereditary  king.  Nor  do  I  see  any  rea- 
son to  question  Thurloe's  statement  that  the  Pro- 
tector named  Richard  his  successor  by  word  of 
mouth  just  before  he  died.  What  else  wras  to  be 
done  ?  Richard  was  weak,  as  his  father  must  too 
well  have  known ;  but  he  was  popular  and  blame- 
less, and  had  the  shadow  of  hereditary  right. 
Henry  Cromwell  was  a  man  of  mark  as  well  as 
of  worth,  but  not  of  mark  enough  to  bear  the  bur- 
den unsupported  by  any  other  claim.  Among 
the  generals  there  was  not  one  to  be  thought  of 
since  Ireton  was  gone.  We  know  the  rest.  How 
military  ambition  broke  loose:  how  anarchy  en- 
sued. Anarchy,  not  Cromwell's  government, 
brought  on  the  restoration.  At  last  the  nobler 
spirit  of  the  nation  rose  again.  But  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1688  was  an  aristocratic  revolution ;  and 
there  were  other  interests  for  which  men  had 
given  their  lives  at  Marston  and  Naseby,  and 


Cromwell.^  135 

with  which,  when  Cromwell  died  before  his  time, 
all  was  over  for  many  a  day. 

All  was  over  here,  and  once  more  there  was 
an  illustration  of  the  frailty  of  systems  and  insti- 
tutions which  depend  on  a  single  life.  But  the 
counsels  of  Providence  never  depend  upon  a  sin- 
gle life.  Just  as  the  great  struggle  was  com- 
mencing in  England,  a  little  bark  put  forth  on 
the  Atlantic,  unnoticed  amidst  the  great  events 
and  the  great  actors  of  the  time.  Its  passengers 
were  Puritan  peasants,  hunted  out  of  their  homes 
by  the  Anglican  hierarchy  and  its  persecuting 
agents.  It  bore  English  Democracy,  safe  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  English  reaction,  to  the  shores 
of  the  New  World.  There,  too,  it  has  encounter- 
ed its  old  foes,  the  enemies  of  liberty,  both  of 
body  and  soul.  But  there  it  has  triumphed  :  it 
has  triumphed  for  itself,  and  it  has  triumphed 
for  us  all. 


PITT. 


III. 

PITT.  —  I. 

THE  European  movement  which  ended  in  the 
French  Revolution,  like  that  which  ended  in  the 
Reformation,  like  all  great  movements  of  human- 
ity, was  complex  in  its  nature.  It  was  at  once 
religious  and  political,  and  it  extended  to  all  the 
other  parts  of  human  life.  In  religion  it  was 
almost  entirely  critical  and  destructive.  To  our 
generation  was  left  the  heavy  task  of  renovating 
faith.  The  religion  of  Rousseau,  indeed,  proved 
itself  the  strongest  among  the  elements  which 
struggled  for  mastery  in  the  Revolution.  We 
can  understand  how  at  the  time  it  breathed  in  its 
freshness  like  the  breath  of  morning  into  the 
feverish  atmosphere  of  French  life.  But  it  was 
merely  a  bastard  Christianity,  emotional,  senti- 
-mental,  based  on  no  conviction.  The  great  serv- 
ice done  to  religion  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  the  advancement  of  toleration,  to  which 
Frederic  the  Great,  tyrant  as  he  was  in  politics, 
was  a  real  friend ;  though  it  was  the  toleration 


140  Tkree  English  Statesmen. 

of  indifference,  not  the  toleration  of  those  who, 
with  deep  convictions,  and  because  they  have 
*  deep  convictions,  reverence  conscience  as  the 
source,  and  liberty  of  conscience  as  the  sole  guar- 
antee, of  truth.  In  the  political  sphere  also  the 
movement  was  merely  destructive ;  it  pulled 
down  feudalism  without  building  up  any  thing 
in  its  place,  and  it  has  left  European  society 
generally  in  a  chaotic  state,  from  which  the  na- 
tions have  sought  refuge  in  democratic  despotism, 
pending  the  evolution  of  a  sound  and  permanent 
order  of  things.  Two  political  ideals,  however, 
this  century  produced ;  the  half-classical,  half- 
Christian  Republicanism  of  Rousseau,  and  the  en- 
lightened and  beneficent  despotism,  having  its 
imaginary  type  in  China,  which  was  the  Utopia 
of  Voltaire.  In  jurisprudence  and  political  econ- 
omy, on  the  other  hand,  there  were  positive  and 
great  results :  in  jurisprudence,  the  reforms  of 
law,  especially  the  law  of  succession  to  property 
and  the  penal  code,  of  which  the  Code  Napoleon 
is  the  most  scientific  embodiment,  though  the 
philosophy  of  the  previous  century  was  the 
source ;  in  economy,  free  trade,  and  all  the  bene- 
fits which  the  world  has  received  from  the  princi- 
ples enunciated  by  Hume,  Turgot,  and,  greatest 
of  all,  Adam  Smith. 

The  first  part  of  Pitt's  life— that  part  which 


Pitt.  141 

forms  the  subject  of  this  evening's  lecture — is  a 
product  of  the  economical,  and  in  some  measure 
also  of  the  political,  part  of  this  European  move- 
ment, limited  by  the  conditions  imposed  on  the 
leader  of  an  aristocratic  assembly  and  a  minister 
of  the  English  crown ;  the  second  part,  which 
will  form  the  subject  of  the  following  lecture,  is 
a  product  of  the  reaction  against  the  religious 
and  political  part  of  the  same  movement  when  it 
had  arrived  at  its  revolutionary  crisis  and  over- 
turned the  French  Church  and  Throne.  During 
the  first  part  of  his  life,  Pitt  is  to  be  classed  with 
the  philosophic  and  reforming  kings  and  minis- 
ters before  the  Revolution,  whose  names  ought 
not  to  be  forgotten,  though  the  Jacobins  chose  to 
call  the  year  of  their  frenzy  the  year  One ;  with 
Joseph  II. ;  with  Pombal,  Aranda.  and  Choiseul, 
the  overthrowers  of  Jesuitism ;  with  Tanucci, 
with  Leopold  of  Tuscany,  with  Turgot,  with  Fred- 
eric of  Prussia,  and  with  Catherine  of  Russia,  so 
far  as  Catherine  and  Frederic  were  organs  of  phi- 
losophy and  reform.  During  the  second  part,  he 
$ends,  though  he  does  not  actually  sink,  to  the 
level  of  the  Metternichs,  the  Polignacs,  the  Perce- 
vals,  and  the  Eldons.  The  Pitt  of  my  present 
lecture  and  the  Pitt  of  my  next  stand  in  strong 
contrast  to  each  other,  though  the  connection  is 
quite  intelligible  and  signally  illustrates  the 


142  Three  English  Statesmen. 

power  of  circumstances  over  any  but  the  strong- 
est men.  The  same  change  is  seen  in  the  lives 
of  Joseph  and  Catherine  and  other  reformers  in 
high  places,  who,  when  the  Revolution  came, 
found  out  that  their  trade  was  that  of  king.  It 
is  seen  in  the  English  aristocracy,  the  more  intel- 
lectual of  whom  had,  like  the  French  aristocracy, 
been  affecting  scepticism  and  Republicanism,  as 
we  may  learn  from  Horace  Walpole,  who  is  al- 
ways throwing  out  light  Voltairian  sentiments 
and  cutting  off  the  head  of  Charles  I.  This  even- 
ing we  speak  of  the  happier  Pitt,  of  him  whose 
monuments  remain  in  free  trade,  an  improved  fis- 
cal system,  religious  toleration,  the  first  steps  to- 
ward colonial  emancipation,  the  abolition  of  the 
slave  trade,  the  condemnation  of  slavery.  An- 
other evening  we  shall  speak  of  the  Pitt  whose 
monuments  remain  in  six  hundred  millions  of 
debt,  and  other  evils  political  and  social,  of  which 
the  bitter  inheritance  has  descended  to  us  and 
will  descend  to  generations  yet  to  come. 

William  Pitt  was  born  beneath  a  roof  illus- 
trious, but  not  likely  to  give  birth  to  an  apostle, 
of  economical  reform.  What  the  inglorious  fru- 
gality of  Walpole  had  saved,  Chatham  had  squan- 
dered in  victory  ;  and  he  had  added  a  heavy  bur- 
den of  debt  besides.  But  the  father  bequeathed 
to  his  child  the  example  of  purity,  of  patriotism, 


Pitt.  143 

of  a  high  aspiring  spirit,  which  soared,  if  not  to 
the  summit  of  political  heroism,  at  least  far  above 
the  place-hunters  and  intriguers  of  the  time. .  He 
bequeathed  to  him  also  of  his  eloquence,  not  the 
incommunicable  fire,  but  so  much  as  assiduous 
culture  under  a  great  master  could  impart,  and 
sent  him  into  public  life  a  youthful  prodigy  in 
the  accomplishment  by  which  we  choose  our 
statesmen.  From  the  conversation  of  Chatham 
and  of  Chatham's  friends,  Pitt,  who  was  brought 
up  at  home,  must  also  have  learned  much ;  and 
thus  his  parliamentary  maturity  at  twenty-one, 
though  a  wonder,  is  not  a  miracle. 

I  have  noticed  that  Pitt  was  brought  up  at 
home.  He  was  nevertheless  no  milksop.  We 
complacently  accept  it  as  a  full  set-off  against  all 
the  evils  of  public  schools,  that  they  make  boys 
manly.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  by  cutting  boys  oif 
from  intercourse  with  men  and  women,  and  con- 
fining them  to  the  society  of  boys,  you  may  make 
them  hard ;  but  not  so  easy  to  see  how  you  can 
make  them  manly.  Pitt  brought  up  in  the  house 
of  Chatham  is,  of  course,  too  exceptional  a  case  to 
reason  from :  but  no  want  of  manliness,  either  of 
mind  or  character,  was  seen  in  this  boy  when  he 
became  prime  minister  at  twenty-four. 

He,  however,  went  to  Cambridge  at  fourteen, 
and  stayed  there  seven  years,  during  which  he 


144  Three  English  Statesmen. 

was  regular  and  read  hard,  owing,  it  rnay  be, 
partly  to  the  weakness  of  his  health,  which  by 
debarring  from  physical  sports  and  enjoyments, 
has  perhaps  turned  not  a  few  men  into  the  path 
which  leads  to  intellectual  greatness.  We  are 
beginning  to  know  the  power  of  education,  and 
the  significance  of  the  question,  what  sort  of  cul- 
ture it  was  that  was  undergone  by  a  future  chief 
of  the  state.  The  classics,  a  school  at  once  of  taste 
and  of  the  political  character  formed  by  a  rather 
narrow  and  heathen  love  of  liberty,  were  the 
staple  of  Pitt's  training,  as  they  had  been  those 
of  the  English  statesmen  before  him.  To  these 
he  added  the  discipline  of  mathematics,  some 
jurisprudence,  some  experimental  philosophy,  and 
a  good  deal  of  general  literature,  in  eluding  history. 
Historical  philosophy  was  not  then  in  exist- 
ence :  it  might  have  taught  him,  the  destined 
ruler  of  his  country  at  the  epoch  of  the  French 
Revolution,  to  view  with  intelligence  and  meet 
with  calmness  the  tremendous  phenomena  of  his 
time.  But  above  all  he  read  the  work,  then  new 
and  unknown  to  his  elder  rivals,  of  Adam  Smith, 
to  which,  in  his  great  budget-speech  of  1792,  he 
referred  as  furnishing  the  best  solution  to  every 
question  connected  with  political  economy  and 
with  trade.  Pitt  was  Adam  Smith's  first  power- 
ful disciple.  And  from  this  source  he  drew  not 


Pitt.  145 

only  the  principles  of  his  commercial  reforms  and 
his  budgets,  but  a  talisman  of  command.  The  com- 
mercial and  manufacturing  interests  were  rapidly 
rising  in  importance,  and  with  these  interests  Pitt 
alone  of  the  party  leaders  had  qualified  himself  to 
deal.  The  aristocratic  statesmen,  with  their  pure- 
ly classical  training,  seldom  stooped  to  any  thing 
so  low  as  economy  or  finance.  Fox  avowed  his 
ignorance  of  political  economy ;  he  used  to  say  he 
did  not  know  why  the  funds  went  up  or  down, 
but  he  liked  to  see  them  go  down  because  it  vex:- 
ed  Pitt.  Sir  Francis  Dashwood  was  thought 
good  enough  for  the  Chancellorship  of  the  Ex- 
chequer, though  a  sum  of  five  figures  was  said  to 
be  an  inscrutable  mystery  to  his  mind.  The  stu- 
dent of  the  "  Wealth  of  Nations"  might  have 
learned,  and  perhaps  he  did  learn,  from  it,  other 
things  besides  those  which  he  mentioned  in  his 
budget-speech.  Free  principles  hang  together, 
and  Adam  Smith  is,  in  an  unobtrusive  way,  the 
apostle  of  Democracy  as  well  as  of  Free  Trade. 

Pitt's  tutor  was  Pretyrnan,  better  known  in 
the  annals  of  ecclesiastical  rapacity  by  his  later 
name  of  Tomline.  This  man  seems  to  have  done 
the  classical  and  mathematical  part  of  his  duty 
well :  Pitt  at  least  was  grateful  to  him,  and 
gorged  him — to  satiate  him  was  impossible— 

with   preferment,  till  George  III.  cried  "  Hold, 

G 


146  Three  English  Statesmen. 

enough."  Tomline  thus  enriched,  provided  with 
the  means  of  enriching  his  whole  tribe,  and  hav- 
ing inherited  a  private  fortune  besides,  subscribed, 
among  others,  £1,000  toward  the  payment  of 
Pitt's  debts,  which  sum  he  afterward  tried  to  get 
repaid  to  him  by  the  nation. 

Bad  physicians  advised  the  stripling  to  drink 
port,  the  panacea  and  almost  the  physical  gospel 
of  the  age ;  and  he  followed  their  advice  with  a 
vengeance.  Hence  disease  and  mortal  languor  in 
his  prime;  hence  the  constitution  early  decayed 
which  succumbed  to  the  blow  of  Austerlitz.  Lord 
Stanhope — to  whose  most  valuable  biography, 
which  forms  the  foundation  of  this  lecture,  let  me 
here  acknowledge  my  great  obligations — Lord 
Stanhope  says  that  Pitt  was  only  once  seen  drunk. 
There  are  traditions  of  a  different  kind.  In  all 
other  respects  Pitt's  character,  like  that  of  his 
great  father,  was  pure ;  and  though  the  wits 
might  scoff  at  the  idea  that  genius  and  morality 
could  exist  together,  his  purity  gave  him  a  great 
advantage  in  self-control,  in  conscientious  indus- 
try, in  dignity  of  bearing,  in  the  confidence  of  the 
community — especially  of  the  middle  classes — 
over  his  chief  rival,  who,  though  he  had  a  warm 
heart  and  noble  sympathies,  was  a  rake,  a  gam- 
bler, corrupt  himself,  and  a  corrupter  of  the  youths 
about  him.  Of  religion  there  was  little  to  be 


Pitt.  147 

had  in  those  days ;  and  of  that  little  not  much  re- 
sided in  Mr.  Pretyman.  Pitt  was  regular  in  his 
attendance  at  the  college  chapel.  He  also  read 
theology  with  his  tutor,  and  some  would  have  us 
believe  that  he  "became  a  theologian  at  once  most 
learned  and  most  orthodox,  armed  at  all  points  to 
maintain  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  against  all  here- 
sies, whether  on  the  side  of  Popery  or  Dissent ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  tradition  that, 
by  his  own  avowal,  Butler's  "  Analogy"  raised  in 
his  mind  more  doubts  than  it  solved,  wherein  he 
would  by  no  means  have  been  unique.  But  it  is 
plain  that  he  had  not  that  strong  and  present 
sense  of  things  unseen  by  which  the  noblest  char- 
acters have  been  sustained.  So  far  as  integrity 
and  real  desire  of  the  public  good  would  carry 
him,  he  could  go :  but  when  the  great  trial  came, 
the  trial  which  called  for  complete  self-sacrifice, 
the  sustaining  force  was  wanting,  conscience  yield- 
ed to  ambition,  and  the  son  of  the  morning  fell. 

As  Chatham's  son,  Pitt  entered  public  life  as  a 
Whig.  But  Whig,  by  this  time,  meant  little 
more  than  Guelf  or  Ghibelin.  The  Whigs  were 
a  party,  and  an  illustrious  party,  while  they  were 
making  the  Revolution  of  1688,  and  afterward 
while  they  were  defending  the  Revolution  settle- 
ment against  Louis  XIV.  abroad  and  the  Jaco- 
bites at  home.  But  that  struggle  over,  they  be- 


148  Three  English  Statesmen. 

carne  an  oligarchy  of  great  houses  squabbling 
among  themselves  for  the  high  offices  of  state. 
The  long  scene  of  degradation  which  ensued  had, 
for  a  time,  been  broken  by  the  rise  of  Chatham,  a 
middle-class  minister  putting  the  oligarchy  under 
his  feet,  though  to  do  it  he  was  obliged  himself  to 
connive  at  corruption,  and  allow  a  duke  to  do  for 
his  government  the  work  which  the  great  Com- 
moner abhorred.  In  this  party  government  of 
ours,  which  we  take  for  an  eternal  ordinance  of 
nature,  though  it  is  but  an  accident  of  yesterday, 
every  thing  depends  on  the  existence  of  a  real 
division  of  opinion  on  some  important  question. 
When  the  great  questions  are  for  the  time  out  of 
the  way,  party  government  degenerates  into  a 
chronic  faction-fight  between  a  connection  which 
wants  to  get  place  and  a  connection  which  wants 
to  keep  it.  At  this  time  the  great  questions  were 
out  of  the  way,  there  was  no  real  division  of  par- 
ties, and  a  reign  of  cabal  and  corruption  naturally 
ensued.  All  the  factions  alike  used  power  for 
class  purposes ;  the  nation  had  little  interest  in 
their  scuffles,  and  no  hope  but  that  by  some  acci- 
dent a  man  of  heart  and  brain  might  get  into  his 
hands  a  measure  of  independent  power,  and  use  it 
partly  for  the  public  good. 

Pitt  took  his  seat  when  only  just  of  age  for  the 
nomination  borough   of  Appleby,  and   at  once 


Pitt.  149 

came  forward  in  debate.  His  command  of  round- 
ed sentences  was  already  fearful;  assuredly  no 
youth  ever  wrote  such  stately  dispatches  to  his 
mother.  He  gave  the  House  without  delay  a 
taste  of  his  oratorio  training,  and  early  showed 
his  greatest  gift  as  an  orator,  the  power  of  lofty 
sarcasm,  which,  in  a  House  not  much  in  earnest, 
is  so  telling,  both  in  its  direct  effect,  and  because, 
unlike  open  invective,  it  suggests  a  reserve  of  pow- 
er. Those  stately  speeches  of  his,  with  their  long 
rolling  periods,  were,  no  doubt,  very  imposing 
when  they  were  delivered  with  an  imperial  bear- 
ing and  haughty  gestures  from  the  summit  of 
Parliamentary  command.  But  the  best  of  them, 
and  those  best  reported,  can  scarcely  be  placed 
in  the  small  number  of  orations  which  deserve 
to  live  beyond  the  hour.  They  contain  few 
memorable  words.  That  fusion  of  reason  in  the 
fire  of  passion,  the  attribute  of  the  highest  elo- 
quence, is  not  there.  They  are  the  works  of  tal- 
ent, but  not  of  genius. 

The  war  with  the  American  Colonies  had  al- 
most run  its  guilty  and  disastrous  course,  and 
was  drawing  near  its  shameful  end.  The  North 
ministry  tottered  to  its  fall.  It  was  upheld  only 
by  the  personal  support  of  the  king,  who,  like 
kings  in  general,  was  still  for  war.  Pitt  went 
into  strong  opposition.  He  denounced  the  war 


150  Three  English  Statesmen. 

with  a  vehemence  which,  we  should  have  thought, 
would  have  seemed  inexpiable  to  the  king.  He 
supported  Burke's  motion  for  retrenchment.  He 
took  up  Parliamentary  Reform  warmly,  and  made 
the  question  his  own.  This  he  did  with  his  guns 
leveled  directly  against  the  corrupt  influence  of 
the  court — "an  influence,"  he  said,  "which  has 
been  pointed  at  in  every  period  as  the  fertile 
source  of  all  our  miseries — an  influence  which  has 
been  substituted  in  the  room  of  wisdom,  of  activ- 
ity, of  exertion,  and  of  success — an  influence  which 
has  grown  with  our  growth,  and  strengthened 
with  our  strength,  but  which  unhappily  has  not 
diminished  with  our  diminution,  nor  decayed  with 
our  decay."  The  court  was  so  discredited  and  de- 
tested that  on  his  motion  for  a  select  committee 
Pitt  was  only  beaten  by  20.  It  has  been  remarked 
that  the  Reformers  never  had  so  good  a  division 
again  till  1831.  Pitt  also  voted  for  the  motion  of 
the  Radical  Alderman  Sawbridge  to  shorten  the 
duration  of  parliaments.  If  this  bright  archangel 
of  Toryism  had  sat  long  in  opposition  he  might 
have  become  a  minister  of  the  Darker  Power. 

North  fell ;  and  over  the  prostrate  favorite  of 
the  court  Fox  and  Rockingham  entered  the  royal 
closet  by  storm.  On  Rockingham's  death  Fox 
pressed  the  Duke  of  Portland  on  the  king  as  first 
minister,  but  the  king  carried  Lord  Shelburne, 


Pitt.  151 

one  of  Chatham's  old  connection ;  and  Pitt,  whose 
aspiring  boyhood  had  refused  office  without  a 
seat  in  the  cabinet  under  Rockingham,  came  into 
Shelburne's  cabinet  at  twenty-three  as  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer.  The  foot  of  Adam  Smith  was 
on  the  steps  of  power. 

The  Shelburne  ministry  had  to  make  peace 
with  the  Americans,  and  with  their  allies,  France 
and  Spain ;  but  on  the  preliminaries  of  peace  the 
Government  was  overthrown  by  the  profligate  co- 
alition of  Fox  and  North.  Profligate  that  coa- 
lition was,  not  so  much  because  it  violated  politi- 
cal principle,  for  none  of  these  factions  had  much 
political  principle  to  violate,  as  because  it  violated 
personal  honor.  Fox  had  spoken  of  North  in 
terms  which  made  an  alliance  between  them, 
manifestly  concluded  for  the  sake  of  getting  back 
into  place,  equally  infamous  to  them  both.  The 
king  struggled ;  he  turned  to  Pitt ;  and  the  daz- 
zling offer  of  the  premiership  was  refused  by  a 
far-sighted  youth  of  twenty-three.  Then  the  king 
was  forced  to  go  under  the  yoke ;  but  this  time 
the  nation  was  with  him,  and  his  defeat  was  a 
moral  victory. 

A  constitutional  monarchy,  according  to  the 
classic  aphorism  of  M.  Thiers,  is  one  in  which  the 
king  reigns  and  does  not  govern ;  in  the  less 
pointed  words  of  Lord  North,  one  in  which  the 


152  Three  English  Statesmen. 

king  has  only  the  appearance  of  power.  This 
highly  artificial  arrangement-1— for  highly  artificial 
it  is  when  we  consider  that  the  king  is  treated, 
even  in  our  addresses  to  Heaven,  as  though  he  were 
the  real  ruler,  and  we  his  obedient  subjects — is 
commonly  taken  to  be  coeval  with  the  monarchy  of 
England.  It  came  into  existence  a  century  and  a 
half  ago,  and  has  not  continued  without  interrup- 
tion since  that  time.  The  feudal  kings,  like  the 
Saxon  kings  before  them,  not  only  reigned  but 
governed,  and  were  deposed,  and  sometimes  put 
to  death,  if  they  governed  ill.  The  Tudors  were 
despots.  The  Stuarts  tried  to  be.  William  III., 
though  a  foreigner,  and  dependent  on  the  Whigs 
for  his  crown,  was  at  the  head  of  his  own  govern- 
ment, had  no  foreign  minister  but  himself,  at  a 
time  when  foreign  policy  was  the  most  important 
department,  and  vetoed  the  Triennial  Act.  Anne 
changed  the  government  and  the  policy  of  the 
country  at  the  whim  of  her  waiting- woman.  The 
first  constitutional  king  was  George  I.,  a  foreign- 
er like  William,  very  stupid,  which  William  was 
not,  unable  to  speak  English,  with  a  Pretender 
across  the  water,  and  absolutely  in  the  hands  of 
his  Whig  patrons.  George  II.  was  pretty  much 
in  the  same  case,  and  accordingly  he  was  only  one 
degree  less  constitutional  than  his  father.  But 
George  III.,  as  he  told  Parliament  in  graceful 


Pitt.  153 

compliment  to  the  shades  of  his  ancestors,  was 
born  a  Briton.  "  What  lustre,"  responded  the 
peers,  "  does  it  add  to  the  naine  of  Briton  when 
you,  sir,  esteem  it  among  your  glories."  Jacobin- 
ism was  defunct ;  and  the  last  non-juring  bishop 
died  about  this  time,  an  apothecary  at  Shrews- 
bury, owning  that  Providence  had  declared  itself 
for  the  Hanover  line.  Therefore,  George  III.  was 
not  constitutional :  he  wished  not  only  to  reign 
but  to  govern.  He  is  surely  not  much  to  be 
blamed  for  that  wish.  Hearing  a  prayer  put  up 
every  Sunday,  that  he  might  be  enabled  to  rule 
well,  he  might  not  unnaturally  conceive  that  it 
was  a  part  of  his  duty  to  rule.  Despotic  ideas 
had  been  carefully  infused  by  his  mother  and  Lord 
Bute  into  a  mind  which  the  absence  of  any  other 
culture  left  entirely  open  for  their  reception ;  for 
never  had  a  born  Briton  so  un-British  an  educa- 
tion. The  Parliament  of  that  day  was  not  a  free 
Parliament,  but  an  oligarchical  and  rotten-bor- 
ough Parliament ;  and  we  might  have  sympa- 
thized with  the  king  if  he  had  really  intended  to 
override  the  factions,  put  the  oligarchy  under  the 
feet  of  a  national  trustee,  promote  merit  in  the 
public  service  without  regard  to  connection,  and 
govern  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  nation.  Un- 
fortunately, George  the  Third's  idea  of  merit  was 

Lord  Bute  and  Mr.  Jenkinson,  and  his  idea  of  gov- 

G2 


154  Three  English  Statesmen. 

erning  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  nation  was  the 
American  war.  It  was  unlucky,  too,  if  the  new  sys- 
tem was  to  restore  purity,  that  it  was  itself  support- 
ed by  corruption ;  and  that  in  this  corruption, 
and  in  the  coarsest  form  of  it — that  connected 
with  elections — the  king  himself  took  an  active 
part.  If  any  one,  in  his  hatred  of  oligarchy, 
dreams  of  a  patriot  king,  let  him  awake  from  that 
dream.  Sooner  than  a  patriot  king,  he  will  find 
an  oligarchy  ready  to  divest  itself  of  power. 

George  III.  tried  unconstitutional  monarchy, 
first  by  Lord  Bute,  a  walking-gentleman,  and 
failed ;  then  by  Lord  North,  a  good  man  of  busi- 
ness and  a  good  parliamentary  tactician,  but  pliant 
enough  to  submit  to  government  by  departments ; 
that  is,  a  government  in  which  the  king  was  first 
minister,  and  the  departments  against  their  con- 
sciences carried  on  the  king's  American  war. 
But  the  end  of  that  war  brought  the  system  to 
the  ground  amidst  a  storm  of  odium ;  and  only 
the  superior  odium  of  the  coalition  could  have 
given  the  king  a  third  chance.  A  third  chance 
he  now  had,  and  having  twice  before  got  hold  of 
a  tool  who  was  not  strong  enough  to  be  a  minis- 
ter, he  now  got  hold  of  a  minister  who  was  rather 
too  strong  to  be  a  tool. 

The  coalition  deserved  to  fall,  but  not  on  the 
measure  on  which  it  fell.  It  had  become  necessa- 


Pitt.  155 

ry  for  humanity,  and  for  the  honor  of  the  country, 
to  arrest  the  servants  of  the  East  India  Company 
in  their  career  of  crime.  The  government  brought 
in  a  bill  taking  India  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
Company  and  putting  it  into  the  hands  of  a  board 
of  seven  commissioners  to  be  named  for  the  first 
time  by  Parliament  and  afterward  by  the  crown. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  measure  was 
framed  in  good  faith.  Burke,  whose  zeal  for 
Indian  reform  none  will  question,  was  its  framer. 
Fox  himself,  with  all  his  faults,  was  a  true  friend 
of  humanity :  let  us  honor  his  name  for  it,  at  a 
time  when  contempt  for  humanity  and  sympathy 
with  cruelty  is  cultivated  by  feebleness  as  a  proof 
of  vigor,  and  lauded  by  public  instructors  as  a 
healthy  English  tone.  As,  however,  the  majority 
in  Parliament  were  to  have  the  nominations  for 
the  first  time,  a  cry  was  got  up  that  the  party  in- 
tended, by  the  appropriation  of  overwhelming  pat- 
ronage, to  perpetuate  itself  in  power.  Set  up  by 
Pitt  and  the  opposition,  this  cry  was  swelled  of 
course  by  the  whole  East  Indian  interest,  which 
by  buying  rotten  boroughs  had  made  itself  a 
great  parliamentary  power,  and  was  beginning, 
in  the  secret  counsels  of  Providence,  to  avenge, 
by  its  pestilential  influence  on  English  politics, 
the  wrongs  of  the  Hindoo.  The  great  standing 
army,  estranged  from  the  ideas  of  English  citizen- 


156  Three  English  Statesmen. 

ship  and  from  reverence  for  English  liberties, 
which  is  now  being  trained  up  in  India,  may  per- 
haps one  day  carry  farther  the  work  of  retribution, 
and  teach  people  that  they  can  not  practice  rapine 
in  another  country,  even  under  pretense  of  propa- 
gating Christianity,  and  with  the  tacit  sanction  of 
their  bishops,  without  entailing  some  consequences 
on  their  own.  The  king  was  in  a  paroxysm  of 
rage  and  fear  at  the  prospect  of  having  so  much 
power  taken  out  of  his  hands.  The  bill,  however, 
passed  the  Commons  by  a  large  majority,  and 
was  on  the  point  of  passing  the  Lords,  when 
Lord  Temple,  who  had  before  been  carrying  on  a 
most  unconstitutional  correspondence  with  the 
king  against  the  ministers,  crept  to  the  royal 
ear,  and  received  from  his  majesty  a  paper  to  be 
handed  about  among  the  Lords  in  the  following 
terms :  "  His  Majesty  allowed  Earl  Temple  to 
say  that  whoever  voted  for  the  India  Bill  was 
not  only  not  his  friend  but  would  be  considered 
by  him  as  an  enemy ;  and  if  these  words  were 
not  strong  enough,  Earl  Temple  might  use  what- 
ever words  he  deemed  stronger  and  more  to  the 
purpose."  The  only  words  which  could  have 
been  stronger  and  more  to  the  purpose  would 
have  been  some  having  reference  to  more  substan- 

O 

tial  motives  than  affection  for  the  royal  person. 
By  a  free  use  of  this  august  document,  the  India 


Pitt.  157 

Bill  was  thrown  out ;  and  the  Coalition  ministers 
fell,  most  of  them  in  transports  of  rage,  Lord 
North,  with  hjs  usual  good-humor,  declining  to 
get  out  of  bed  at  twelve  o'clock  at  night  to  give 
up  the  seals,  and  forcing  the  royal  envoy,  who 
came  at  that  unseasonable  hour,  to  have  an  in- 
terview with  Lady  North,  as  well  as  with  himself. 
For  a  moment,  Temple,  the  author  of  the  plot, 
was  secretary  of  state ;  but  he  immediately  van- 
ished under  a  cloud  of  mystery  which  has  never 
been  cleared  away.  Lord  Stanhope  is  inclined 
to  think  that  Lord  Temple  having  saved  the 
monarchy  by  a  back-stairs  intrigue,  wished  to  as- 
sure its  salvation  by  getting  himself  made  a  duke; 
and  that  the  king,  faithful  to  first  principles,  even 
in  this  supreme  hour  of  political  extremity,  would 
make  none  but  royal  dukes.  A  more  obvious 
solution  is  that  Temple,  like  most  intriguers,  was 
a  coward,  and  that  his  heart  failed  him.  as  he 
touched  his  prize.  What  is  certain  is,  that  Lord 
Temple  went  to  Stowe.  Meanwhile  the  king 
had  turned  again  to  Pitt;  and  Pitt  was  prime 
minister,  and  not  only  prime  minister,  but,  as  the 
rest  of  the  cabinet  were  mere  respectabilities,  sole 
minister  at  twenty-four. 

Unluckily  there  was  now  a  taint  on  his  appoint- 
•rnent,  which  there  would  not  have  been  if  he  had 
dared  to  accept  the  prime  ministership  before. 


158  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Lord  Stanhope  defends  the  king  and  his  partners 
in  this  transaction.  He  says  the  rules  of  the  con- 
stitution were  not  then  settled.  The  principle 
that  the  king  was  not  to  take  notice  of  any  thing 
depending  in  Parliament  had  been  asserted,  as  I 
apprehend,  against  the  Stuarts.  But  be  this  as  it 
may,  if  the  rules  of  the  constitution  were  not  set- 
tled, the  rules  of  honor  were ;  and  the  rules  of 
honor,  while  they  permitted  the  king  to  dismiss 
his  ministers  openly  and  appeal  against  them  to 
the  country,  did  not  permit  him  to  stab  them  in 
the  dark.  But,  says  Lord  Stanhope,  Pitt  at  all 
events  stands  clear.  His  conduct  was  excusable 
perhaps ;  but  if  the  transaction  was  criminal,  he 
was  not  guiltless.  He  was  an  accomplice  after 
the  fact.  He  screened  Lord  Temple  in  Parliament. 
He  accepted  the  fruits  of  the  intrigue.  Afterward, 
he  was  himself  called  upon  to  confront  the  prej- 
udices of  the  king.  George  III.  was  cunning, 
and  though  he  might  quail  before  the  haughty 
son  of  Chatham,  he  must  have  felt  in  his  heart 
that  Pitt  had  once  been  his  accomplice. 

Then  came  the  famous  struggle  of  the  young 
minister  at  the  head  of  a  minority,  and  without  a 
colleague  to  support  him  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, against  the  superior  forces  and  the  veteran 
chiefs  of  the  Coalition.  The  merit  of  Pitt  in  this 
struggle  has  been  overrated.  The  Opposition 


Pitt.  159 

made  him  a  present  of  the  victory.  They  should 
have  proceeded  not  passionately  but  vigorously 
against  Temple,  and  treated  Pitt  with  cool  for- 
bearance, so  as  to  avoid  making  him  an  object  of 
national  sympathy.  They  proceeded  passionately 
but  by  no  means  vigorously  against  Temple,  and 
they  assailed  Pitt  with  a  ferocity  which  arrayed 
the  sympathies  of  all  men  on  his  side.  The  fact 
is,  however,  that  Pitt  played  a  winning  game 
from  the  beginning.  The  numbers  of  the  majori- 
ty in  the  house  were  no  measure  of  their  hold  on 
the  country.  The  nation  was  weary  of  cabals 
which  bandied  power  from  one  set  of  place-hunt- 
ers to  another.  Its  heart  yearned  toward  the 
young,  and  as  it  hoped  pure  and  patriotic,  son  of 
Chatham.  The  Tories  wished  the  king  to  choose 
his  own  ministers.  The  few  Radicals  that  there 
were  hated  the  great  Whig  houses.  The  Coali- 
tion was  hated  by  all. 

In  the  middle  of  the  struggle  the  Clerkship  of 
the  Pells  (a  sinecure  office  with  an  income  of 
£3,000  a  year)  fell  vacant.  The  minister  might 
have  taken  it  himself,  and  Pitt  was  poor.  He 
fancied  that  if  he  lost  his  place  he  should  have  to 
go  back  to  the  bar.  But  he  used  the  windfall  to 
redeem  a  pension  which  had  been  improperly  be- 
stowed by  the  other  party,  thus  placing  his  own 
purity  in  contrast  with  their  corruption.  As  a 


160  Three  English  Statesmen. 

minister  lie  waged  no  war  on  great  sinecures,  and 
lie  held  the  Wardenship  of  the  Cinque  Ports  him- 
self. But  this  act  proved  at  least  that  he  was 
playing  a  high  game,  and  that  he  would  not  let 
his  cupidity  stand  in  the  way  of  his  ambition. 
He  showed  sagacity,  too,  in  putting  off  the  disso- 
lution, and  thus  giving  the  Opposition  rope  to 
hang  themselves,  and  the  tide  of  opinion  time  to 
rise  in  his  favor.  Even  in  the  House,  the  Oppo- 
sition was  at  the  last  gasp ;  and  when  urged  by 
its  leaders  to  throw  out  the  Mutiny  Bill,  it  no 
longer  answered  the  spur.  A  last  effort  was 
made  by  a  devoted  adherent  in  the  falling  hour 
of  the  great  Whig  houses.  The  day  before  the 
dissolution  somebody  stole  the  Great  Seal.  But 
the  fortitude  and  resource  of  the  young  minister 
were  equal  to  the  occasion,  and  a  new  Great  Seal 
was  at  once  made. 

When  Pitt  at  last  went  to  the  country,  there 
was  a  rout  of  the  Opposition  never  paralleled  ex- 
cept when  the  Whigs,  in  their  turn,  threw  the 
Tories  to  the  reformed  constituencies  in  1832. 
The  great  majority  with  which  Pitt  returned  to 
the  House  was  a  medley,  in  which  high  Tories 
were  mixed  up  with  Alderman  Sawbridge  and 
John  Wilkes.  But  he  rapidly  gave  it  consistency 
by  making  his  name  the  symbol  of  prosperity  and 
sound  finance,  and  by  attaching  commerce,  whose 


Pitt.  161 

interests  lie  alone  understood,  firmly  to  his  banner. 
Soon  lie  was  all-powerful,  and  the  beginning  of 
his  reign  is  an  epoch  in  our  history.  There  had 
been  no  revolution.  All  the  cabinet  were  peers 
except  Pitt  himself;  and  -he  was  an  earl's  son. 
He  had  come  into  power  by  the  personal  favor  of 
the  king.  He  could  do  nothing  against  the  king 
or  his  order.  But  with  these  restrictions,  he  wish- 
ed to  rule  for  the  public  good.  His  intellect  was 
probably  not  so  high  as  that  of  Turgot,  but  it 
was  more  practical:  and  his  task  was  not,  like 
that  of  Turgot,  almost  hopeless.  Bright  years, 
years  bright  for  himself — and,  on  the  whole,  bright 
for  his  country — lay  before  him.  Such  a  part 
can  scarcely  ever  be  played  again.  In  ordinary 
times,  connection  and  experience  must  rule.  But 
it  is  possible  that,  under  certain  circumstances,  the 
House  of  Commons  may  once  more  weary  and  dis- 
gust the  nation;  and  that  a  statesman  of  high 
bearing  and  known  public  spirit  may  once  more 
appeal  with  success  from  cabal  and  faction  to  the 
heart  of  the  people. 

The  highly  aristocratic  composition  of  Pitt's 
cabinet  is  a  proof  that  there  had  been  no  revo- 
lution :  it  has  also  been  justly  cited  as  one  of  the 
many  confutations  of  the  theory  that  the  Tories 
are  less  oligarchical  than  the  Whigs.  Under  the 
influence  of  this  theory,  Lord  Stanhope,  a  moder- 


1 62  Three  English  Statesmen. 

ate  Tory,  sometimes  lapses  into  language  funda- 
mentally democratic.  "In  1784  the  independent 
freeholders  of  Yorkshire  boldly  confronted  the 
great  houses" — this  is  an  appeal  to  a  dangerous 
spirit,  unless  care  is  taken  to  insert "  Tory"  before 
"  freeholders,"  and  "  Whig"  before  "  great  houses." 
The  fact  seems  to  be  that  the  Tories  being, 
through  some  cause  unexplained  by  political 
science,  rather  more  stupid  than  the  Whigs,  have 
been  rather  more  often  obliged  to  take  adven- 

O 

turers  into  pay ;  but  they  do  this  for  oligarch- 
ical purposes,  and  an  oligarch  is  not  the  less  an 
oligarch  because  he  keeps  a  bravo. 

The  young  conqueror  sullied  his  triumph  by 
most  ungenerous  conduct  to  his  rival  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  Westminster  Scrutiny.  He  had  the 
mortification,  as  deserved  as  it  was  bitter,  of  find- 
ing himself  at  last  placed  in  a  minority  by  the 
more  generous  feeling  of  his  own  followers.  In 
one  of  these  debates,  which,  in  spite  of  the  aristo- 
cratic character  of  the  speakers,  were  as  rancorous 
and  personal  as  any  thing  in  an  American  Con- 
gress, Fox  made  a  really  great  speech,  in  which 
he  read  his  young  rival  a  well-merited  lecture  on 
the  expediency  of  moderation  in  the  use  of  victory. 
Nothing  can  exceed  the  pertness  and  bad  taste  of 
Pitt's  reply — "I  am  not  surprised  if  he  should 
pretend  to  be  the  butt  of  ministerial  persecution ; 


Pitt.  163 

and  if,  by  striving  to  excite  the  public  compassion, 
lie  should  seek  to  reinstate  himself  in  that  popu- 
larity which  he  once  enjoyed,  but  which  he  so  un- 
happily has  forfeited.  For  it  is  the  best  and  most 
ordinary  resource  of  these  political  apostates  to 
court  and  offer  themselves  to  persecution,  for  the 
sake  of  the  popular  predilection  and  pity  which 
usually  fall  upon  persecuted  men;  it  becomes 
worth  their  while  to  suffer  for  a  time  political 
martyrdom,  for  the  sake  of  the  canonization  that 
awaits  the  suffering  martyr ;  and  I  make  no  doubt 
the  right  honorable  gentleman  has  so  much  pen- 
etration, and  at  the  same  time  so  much  passive 
virtue  about  him,  that  not  only  would  he  be  glad 
to  seem  a  poor,  injured,  persecuted  man,  but  he 
would  gladly  seek  an  opportunity  of  even  really 
suffering  a  little  persecution  if  it  be  possible  to 
find  such  an  opportunity."  It  must  have  been 
difficult  for  an  opponent,  or  for  any  one  indeed 
but  a  partisan,  to  help  very  cordially  abhorring 
the  gifted  youth,  from  whose  lips  flowed  unbidden 
such  perfect  periods  as  these ;  especially  when  at 
his  back  was  a  mob  of  Tory  squires,  under  the 
famous  Rolle,  hooting  down  the  speakers  on  the 
other  side — a  habit  perhaps  not  yet  quite  extinct. 
If  there  was  any  one  in  that  assembly  to  whom 
the  term  apostate  might  with  justice  have  been 
applied,  it  was  the  vehement  advocate  of  Parlia- 


164  Three  English  Statesmen. 

mentary  Reform  as  the  great  antidote  to  secret  in- 
fluence who  now  stood,  through  a  most  flagrant 
exercise  of  secret  influence,  first  minister  of  the 
crown. 

Pitt's  great  glories  are  economical  and  financial. 
In  that  sphere,  as  he  touched  neither  prerogative 
nor  privilege,  royalty  and  aristocracy  allowed  him 
to  have  free  play.  They  even  formed  his  support 
in  contending  against  the  commercial  tyranny  of 
protection. 

He  found  the  finances  after  the  American  war 
and  the  North  administration  in  a  desperate 
state.  There  were  14  millions  of  unfunded  debt ; 
exchequer  bills  were  at  20  discount ;  consols  were 
at  56.  The  customs  were  so  laid  on  that  the 
smuggling  trade  in  tea  was  double  the  lawful 
trade  in  amount.  The  pupil  of  Adam  Smith  set 
all  this  right,  brought  income  by  bold  taxation  to 
a  level  with  expenditure,  and  applying  the  prin- 
ciple which  he  was  the  first  to  grasp — that  reduc- 
tion of  duties  will  increase  revenue  by  increasing 
consumption — transferred  the  gains  of  the  smug- 
gler to  the  national  exchequer.  He  was  at  the 
same  time  enabled  to  do  away  with  a  number  of 
places  in  the  customs  and  excise,  and  thereby 
not  only  to  reduce  the  national  expense,  but  to 
stanch  some  of  the  sources  of  corruption.  He 
thus,  in  spite  of  some  occasional  waste  in  arma- 


Pitt.  165 

merits,  the  debts  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  the 
voracity  of  the  civil  list,  turned  deficit  into  sur- 
plus, and  saved  England  perhaps  from  a  crash 
like  that  to  which  deficit  was  hurrying  France. 
He  was  also  the  author  of  the  reform  which  put 
up  loans  to  the  highest  bidder,  instead  of  making 
them  government  patronage,  with  a  toll  to  cor- 
ruption. 

Adam  Smith  had  denounced  funding.  His  pu- 
pil, when  obliged  to  borrow,  borrowed  in  the  five 
rather  than  in  the  three  per  cents,  to  keep  down 
the  capital  debt  and  improve  the  chance  of  pay- 
ing off.  He  had  not  read  Lord  Macaulay,  who 
from  the  growth  of  suburban  villas  "  embosomed 
in  gay  little  paradises  of  lilacs  and  roses,"  proves 
that  a  funded  debt  of  eight  hundred  millions  is  no 
burden  to  the  nation.  He  had  not  learned  that  in 
the  case  of  a  national  debt,  debtor  and  creditor  are 
the  same,  so  that,  as  it  seems,  we  might  as  well 
simplify  the  transaction  by  the  use  of  the  sponge. 
Still  less,  probably,  had  he,  like  Lord  Macaulay, 
discerned  the  recondite  truth,  that  the  practice  of 
fighting  with  soldiers  hired  at  the  expense  of  pos- 
terity, which  removes  the  last  restraint  on  war,  is 
favorable  to  the  ascendancy  of  intellect  over  force. 
He  might  have  asked  Lord  Macaulay,  if  a  nation- 
al debt  was  a  blessing,  why  it  should  not  be 
doubled? 


1 66  Three  English  Statesmen. 

In  his  anxiety  to  reduce  the  debt  Pitt  was 
caught  by  the  project  of  a  sinking  fund.  When 
national  debts  grew  heavy,  various  projects  were 
devised  in  different  countries  for  conjuring  them 
away  without  the  unpleasant  process  of  paying. 
The  Mississippi  scheme  and  the  South  Sea  scheme 
were  among  the  number.  Tampering  with  the 
currency  was  a  coarse  expedient.  The  simplest 
was  that  of  the  French  finance  minister,  Abbe 
Terrai,  who  repudiated  fifty  per  cent,  and  proved 
that  the  glory  of  repudiation  is  not  monopolized 
by  republics.  The  sinking  fund  was  a  project  for 
conjuring  away  the  debt  by  the  magic  of  com- 
pound interest.  People  think  that  money  at  com- 
pound interest  grows  of  itself  like  a  plant.  But 
compound  interest,  in  the  case  of  individuals,  is 
merely  compound  savings  re-invested,  and  com- 
pound diversions  of  capital  from  other  investments. 
In  the  case  of  a  national  sinking  fund  it  is  com- 
pound payments  made  by  the  nation  to  itself.  Of 
course,  as  soon  as  the  question  arises  between  far- 
ther boiTowing,  perhaps  at  a  high  rate  of  inter- 
est, for  some  pressing  emergency,  and  dipping  into 
the  sinking  fund,  the  sinking  fund  goes  to  the 
wall.  There  are  only  three  courses  for  nations 
which  have  run  into  debt — to  bear  the  debt  for- 
ever, to  become  bankrupt,  or  to  remain  at  peace, 
retrench  and  pay. 


Pitt.  167 

It  does  seem,  however,  that  a  nation  ought  to 
take  advantage  of  its  immortality,  and  to  borrow 
on  terminable  rather  than  on  perpetual  annui- 
ties. To  the  mortal  creditor  there  is  no  difference 
between  an  annuity  for  the  longest  span  of  mortal 
interest  and  an  annuity  forever.  To  the  immor- 
tal nation  there  is,  between  a  burden  for  a  centu- 
ry and  a  burden  forever,  all  the  difference  in  the 
world. 

Destiny  mocks  the  hopes  of  man.  This  is  the 
minister  of  whom  it  was  too  truly  said — "Mr. 
Pitt's  memory  needs  no  statues"  Six  hundred 
millions  of  irredeemable  debt  are  the  eternal  rec- 
ord of  his  fame."  He  ought,  from  his  early  stud- 
ies and  experiences,  to  have  felt  more  strongly  the 
injustice  of  laying  burdens  on  other  generations 
without  their  own  consent.  In  barbarous  ages, 
people  when  they  went  to  war  fought  themselves. 
Civilization  taught  them  to  hire,  impress,  or  kid- 
nap other  people  to  fight  for  them.  Still  there 
was  a  check  on  war  while  those  who  made  it  had 
to  pay.  Taxation  of  the  present  was  confined 
within  narrow  limits;  it  provoked  unpleasant 
outcries,  sometimes  it  provoked  resistance.  So  the 
expedient  was  hit  upon  of  taxing  the  mute  and 
unresisting  future.  The  system  was  perfected  by 
degrees.  At  first  the  government  only  anticipa- 
ted payments  which  they  might,  with  some  color 


1 68  Three  English  Statesmen. 

or  reason,  call  tlieir  own.  Then  they  mortgaged 
particular  sources  of  revenue.  Funding  with  us 
dates  from  William  III. ;  hence  to  the  author  of 
the  great  Whig  epic,  of  which  William  is  the 
Achilles,  the  system  seems  all  lilacs  and  roses. 

Pitt's  financial  speeches  were  as  notable  as  his 
budgets.  Inferior,  no  doubt,  in  knowledge  to 
those  of  Peel,  they  are  superior  in  form,  which  is 
something  when  people  are  to  be  instructed  on  a 
subject  to  most  men  at  once  repulsive  and  obscure. 

In  the  mind  of  Pitt,  as  in  that  of  Adam  Smith, 
as  in  that  of  Cobden,  as  in  the  councils  of  Provi- 
dence, free  trade  was  connected  with  a  policy  of 
peace  and  good-will  among  nations.  Pitt,  too, 
was  "  an  international  man."  Since  the  religious 
wars  of  the  sixteenth  century,  hatred  had  been 
the  law  of  Christendom.  International  malignity 
had  been  organized  under  the  name  of  the  Bal- 
ance of  Power.  Each  nation  had  thought  itself 
prosperous  just  so  far  as  it  could  prevent  the 
prosperity  of  others.  Hence  protection,  the  colo- 
nial system,  and  commercial  as  well  as  diplomatic 
wars.  Chatham's  glory  had  been  bound  up  with 
these  notions,  especially  with  the  notion  of  eter- 
nal enmity  between  England  and  France.  But 
Chatham's  son,  enlightened  by  a  better  teacher, 
commenced  the  work  of  healing,  through  free 
commercial  intercourse,  the  divisions  of  Chris- 


Pitt.  169 

tendom.  The  precursor  of  Cobden,  he  carried, 
against  strong  opposition,  a  commercial  treaty 
with  France.  Fox  was  a  man  of  larger  sympa- 
thies than  Pitt,  and  if  he  had  been  in  power 
would  probably  have  been  on  the  whole  a  better 
foreign  minister ;  but  party,  sacred  party,  hurried 
him  and  his  liberal  friends  into  denouncing  the 
treaty  on  the  most  illiberal  grounds  of  interna- 
tional jealousy.  In  defending  it,  Pitt  combated, 
in  language  which  Cobden  might  have  used,  the 
doctrine  that  France  must  be  the  unalterable 
enemy  of  Britain.  He  treated  as  monstrous,  and 
as  founded  neither  in  nature  nor  in  history,  the 
position  that  one  nation  could  be  the  unalterable 
enemy  of  another.  He  called  it  a  libel  on  socie- 
ty, as  supposing  the  existence  of  diabolical  malice 
in  the  original  frame  of  man.  He  was  obliged  to 
pay  some  homage  to  the  war  spirit,  as  in  truth 
does  Adam  Smith ;  and  he  urges  that  whatever 
enriches  us  will,  when  the  time  conies,  give  us  the 
sinews  of  war.  But  he  returns  to  less  equivocal 
ground  in  showing  that  the  chances  of  war  will 
be  diminished  when  nations  are  bound  together 
by  free  trade.  The  chances  of  war  will  be  dimin- 
ished. Let  us  not,  in  the  face  of  so  many  victo- 
ries of  principle,  honor,  passion  over  mere  inter- 
est, imagine  that  any  bond  of  mere  interest  can 

do  more.     If  to  slake  a  fierce  hatred  or  to  uphold 

H 


170  Three  English  Statesmen. 

a  great  cause  men  will  sacrifice  their  lives,  much 
more  will  they  for  a  time  sacrifice  the  luxuries 
for  which  they  are  dependent  on  foreign  trade. 
The  only  sure  guarantee  of  peace  is  morality. 
The  next  greatest  is  not  commerce  but  freedom, 
which  puts  down  standing  armies.  A  commer- 
cial treaty  is  a  poor  set-off  against  the  mischief 
done  by  a  military  despotism,  the  great  embodi- 
ment and  consecration  of  the  war  spirit  in  the 
world :  and  if  we  were  to  truck  our  abhorrence 
of  military  despotism  for  such  a  treaty,  we  should 
find — to  put  the  question  on  the  lowest  ground 
— that  we  had  bought  our  mess  of  pottage  far  too 
dear. 

Adam  Smith  had  advocated  the  union  of  Ire- 
land with  England.  He  had  pointed  out  that 
free  trade  with  England  would  far  more  than 
make  up  to  Ireland  for  the  increase  of  taxation — 
that  by  the  union  of  his  own  country  with  Eng- 
land, the  Scotch  people  had  been  delivered  from 
the  Scotch  aristocracy — that  by  the  same  process 
Ireland  "  might  be  delivered  from  a  much  more 
oppressive  aristocracy,  an  aristocracy  the  most 
odious  of  all,  an  aristocracy  of  political  and  relig- 
ious prejudice,  which,  more  than  any  other  distinc- 
tions, animated  the  insolence  of  the  oppressor  and 
the  hatred  of  the  oppressed,  and  made  the  natives 
of  the  same  country  greater  enemies  than  those 


Pitt.  171 

of  different  countries  ever  were."  At  this  time 
the  relations  between  Ireland  and  England  were 
such  as  could  not  be  endured.  The  Protestant  Re- 
publicans of  the  North  of  Ireland — they,  mind,  not 
the  Catholics — taking  advantage  of  the  weakness 
of  England  after  her  reverses  in  the  American  war, 
and  catching  the  infection  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, had  risen  in  arms,  under  pretense  of  forming 
a  volunteer  army  for  the  defense  of  the  kingdom, 
and  extorted  legislative  independence.  The  result 
was  not,  be  it  remarked,  a  Federal  union,  with  a 
Federal  Government  having  a  definite  province  of 
its  own,  but  two  independent  Parliaments  under 
one  crown;  and  the  crown  being  constitutional, 
the  two  Parliaments  were  two  sovereign  powers. 
There  was  an  hourly  danger  of  a  divergence  pol- 
icy, even  on  questions  of  peace  and  war.  At  the 
same  time,  the  Catholics  remained  excluded  from 
the  Irish  Parliament,  and  Protestant  ascendancy 
was  thus  left  rampant,  without  any  imperial  con- 
trol. The  consequence  was  that  Ireland  was 
ruled,  and  her  policy  kept  in  union  with  that  of 
England  by  systematic  corruption.  Mr.  Massey, 
the  recent  historian  of  this  period,  has  found, 
among  the  original  papers  with  which  his  work 
is  enriched,  a  sort  of  chart  of  the  Irish  Parliament, 
drawn  up  confidentially  for  the  guidance  of 
Pitt :— 


172  Three  English  Statesmen. 

"  II.  H.,  son-in-law  to  Lord  A.,  and  brought 
into  Parliament  by  him.  Studies  the  law ;  wishes 
to  be  a  Commissioner  of  Barracks,  or  in  some  sim- 
ilar place.  Would  go  into  orders,  and  take  a 
living. 

"  H.  D.,  brother  to  Lord  C.  Applied  for  office, 
but  as  no  specific  promise  could  be  made,  has 
lately  voted  in  opposition.  Easy  tcr  be  had,  if 
thought  expedient.  A  silent,  gloomy  man. 

"  L.  M.  refuses  to  accept  £500  a  year ;  states 
very  high  pretensions  for  his  skill  in  House  of 
Commons'  management.  Expects  £1000  a  year. 
— N.  B. :  Be  careful  of  him. 

"  J.  N.  has  been  in  the  army,  and  is  now  on 
half  pay  :  wishes  a  troop  of  dragoons,  or  full  pay. 
States  his  pretensions  to  be  fifteen  years'  service 
in  Parliament. — N.  B. ;  "Would  prefer  office  to 
military  promotion :  but  already  has,  and  has  long 
had,  a  pension.  Character,  especially  on  the  side 
of  truth,  not  favorable. 

"  R.  P.,  independent,  but  well  disposed  to  gov- 
ernment. His  four  sisters  have  pensions,  and  his 
object  is  a  living  for  his  brother. 

"  T.  P.,  brother  to  Lord  L.,  and  brought  in  by 
him.  A  captain  in  the  navy.  Wishes  for  some 
sinecure  employment." 

On  the  government  side  were  the  members  for 
eighty-six  proprietary  seats,  the  owners  of  which 


Pitt.  173 

had  let  them  out  for  titles,  offices,  or  pensions. 
Sir  Arthur  Wellesley,  at  a  later  period,  found 
that  a  zealous  supporter  of  the  government  had 
been  endeavoring  to  strengthen  the  Union  by  ap- 
propriating to  his  own  use  the  gold  provided  for 
the  collars  of  the  order  of  St.  Patrick,  and  putting 
copper  in  its  place.  Meantime  famine,  with  pes- 
tilence in  its  train,  stalked  among  the  Irish  people, 
who  were  reduced  to  the  level  of  beasts  in  every 
thing  except  that  they  had  the  capacity  of  suf- 
fering as  men.  Does  history  afford  a  parallel  to 
that  agony  of  seven  centuries  which  has  not  yet 
reached  its  close?  But  England  is  the  favorite 
of  Heaven,  and  when  she  commits  oppression  it 
will  not  recoil  on  the  oppressor. 

Pitt  brought  in  a  measure  of  free  trade  with 
Ireland  which  was  intended  no  doubt  to  pave  the 
way  for  union.  Party,  combined  perhaps  with 
some  real  ignorance  and  prejudice,  again  led  the 
Foxites  to  the  side  of  illiberality  and  wrong.  Their 
liberalism  at  the  best  was,  in  fact,  a  narrow  thing. 
Even  Burke  is  found  on  this  question  fighting,  an 
Irishman  against  Ireland,  as  well  as  an  economist 
against  free  trade.  And  this  time  the  Opposition 
had  more  than  one  power  of  evil  on  their  side*. 
In  Ireland  the  jealous  fears  of  ascendancy  and  job- 
bery were  aroused.  In  England  Protection  was 
strong.  Shall  I  tell  it  —  eighty  thousand  Lan- 


174  Three  English  Statesmen. 

casliire  manufacturers  signed  a  petition  against 
free  trade !  All  men  are  alike  selfish,  and  till 
their  selfishness  is  enlightened,  all  are  protection- 
ists. Pitt  fought  gallantly  against  this  host  of 
prejudices  and  cupidities.  He  was  beaten,  but 
his  power  was  too  strong  to  be  shaken  by  the 
defeat. 

In  the  article  of  corn,  Pitt  was  himself  a  pro- 
tectionist. He  is  taxed  with  apostasy  by  Gren- 
ville,  who  had  studied  Adam  Smith  with  him,  and 
who  was  a  thorough-going  adherent  of  free  trade. 
Probably  the  disturbing  cause  in  his  mind  was  a 
remnant  of  the  war  theory  of  international  policy, 
which  assumes  that  each  nation  is  a  garrison,  and 
must  be  ready  to  feed  itself  in  case  of  siege. 
However,  the  case  against  the  Corn  Laws  then 
was  not  so  strong  as  it  is  now.  There  was  not 
then  the  vast  manufacturing  and  mining  popula- 
tion which  Protection  afterward  compelled  to 
live  on  the  produce  of  an  insufficient  agricultural 
area,  till  it  reached  starvation  prices,  for  the  ben- 
efit of  the  landlords. 

But  what  became  of  Parliamentary  Reform  ? 
At  the  opening  of  his  ministry  Pitt  still  hoisted 
reform  colors — still  professed  his  determination  to 
press  that  which,  as  he  said,  "  alone  could  entitle 
Englishmen  to  the  appellation  of  free,  and  ensure 
to  wise,  to  virtuous,  and  to  constitutional  endeav- 


Pitt.  175 

ors  a  victory  over  factious  ambition,  and  corrupt 
venality,  the  great  question  of  Parliamentary  Re- 
form." But  the  reformer  grew  very  tame  in  the 
minister.  When  he  did  bring  a  measure  forward 
it  was  not  like  his  first,  a  liberal  disfranchisement 
of  rotten  boroughs  and  redistribution  of  seats,  the 
same  which  had  been  proposed  by  Chatham ;  but 
a  paltry  plan  for  gradually  buying  up  rotten  bor- 
oughs, with  the  consent  of  the  borough-mongers, 
and  transferring  the  seats  to  counties.  Even  this 
was  thrown  out.  The  borough-mongers  were 
shocked  at  the  idea  of  treating  the  franchise  as  a 
matter  of  property  to  be  bought  or  sold.  The 
minister  evidently  did  not  put  forth  his  power  in 
support  of  the  measure  which  consistency  required 
him  to  propose ;  and  if  he  succeeded  in  persuad- 
ing his  dearest  friends  that  his  heart  was  in  it, 
that  only  shows  that  his  dearest  friends  did  not 
always  see  to  the  bottom  of  his  heart.  It  must 
be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  when  Pitt  first 
came  forward  as  a  Parliamentary  Reformer,  at  the 
close  of  the  American  war,  there  was  great  public 
discontent :  he  had  made  the  nation  contented, 
and  now  there  was  apathy.  Yet  had  a  good 
measure  passed,  the  government  and  the  nation 
alike  would  have  felt  a  calm  confidence  in  the 
soundness  of  their  institutions,  which  would  have 
prevented  the  panic  dread  of  French  infection, 


176  Three  English  Statesmen. 

and  saved  us  from  the  revolutionary  war.  This 
was  the  accepted  season,  and  it  departed,  not  to 
be  recalled. 

Sinecureisni,  as  I  said  before,  gross  as  it  then 
was,  Pitt  scarcely  attempted  to  attack,  though 
with  his  customs'  reforms  a  number  of  useless 
places  fell.  He  even  goes  out  of  his  way  to  com- 
mend Addington  for  bestowing  a  colossal  sinecure 
on  his  nephew,  a  boy  of  sixteen.  Perhaps  he 
thought  coiTuption  good  enough  for  Addington 
and  kept  purity  for  himself.  But  the  task  would 
have  been  a  hard  one ;  it  might  even  have  cost 
him  the  power  which  he  was  using,  on  the  whole, 
for  the  public  good.  In  the  last  hour  of  the 
French  monarchy,  when  the  handwriting  was  on 
the  wall,  the  reforming  ministers  found  it  impos- 
sible to  reduce  sinecures  anfl.  pensions.  The  min- 
istry of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Sir  Kobert 
Peel  estranged  Tory  support  from  them  when 
they  tried  to  save  Toryism  by  the  same  means. 
It  is  vain  to  appeal  to  these  people  to  give  up  the 
abuses  in  order  to  save  the  system.  What  they 
care  for  is  not  the  system  but  the  abuses. 

There  was  one  kind  of  corruption  of  which 
Pitt  himself  was  the  prince.  In  the  course  of  his 
ministry  he  created  or  promoted  in  the  peerage 
one  hundred  and  forty  peers.  The  great  mass  of 
these  creations  and  promotions  were  not  for  merit 


Pitt.  177 

of  any  kind,  but  for  political  support.  If  the 
Peerage  of  England  intends,  as  it  seemed  from  the 
language  held  in  the  debate  on  life-peerages  that 
it  did  intend,  to  set  up  a  divine  right  against  the 
nation,  it  had  better  not  look  into  its  own  annals ; 
for  taking  those  annals  from  the  days  of  Henry 
VIII.  and  his  minions,  the  real  commencement  of 
our  present  nobility  (the  feudal  nobility  having 
been  destroyed  in  the  Wars  of  the  Eoses),  it 
would  perhaps  be  difficult  to  find  a  group  of  fam- 
ilies whose  ennoblement  had  less  to  do  with  hon- 
or. The  Stuarts  sold  peerages  for  money;  later 
peer-makers  have  sold  them  for  votes.  "  Besides 
these  appointments" — says  Lord  Stanhope,  after 
giving  an  account  of  the  accession  of  the  Duke  of 
Portland  and  his  friends  to  Pitt's  government — 
"  beside  these  appointments,  two  or  three  peerages, 
and  two  or  three  places  of  less  amount,  gratified 
some  less  leading  members  of  the  same  connection." 
And  not  only  the  "  less  leading  members  of  the 
connection,"  who  were  thus  gratified,  but  their 
descendants  to  the  end  of  time,  even  though  they 
might  degenerate  from  the  littleness  of  their 
sires,  were  to  have  a  sacred  and  indefeasible  right 
of  legislating  for  a  great  nation.  Not  only  so,  but 
if  they  did  not  choose  to  leave  their  country 
houses  or  Newmarket  for  a  division,  they  were  to 
have  the  right  of  deciding  by  proxy  the  destinies 


178  Tkree  English  Statesmen. 

of  England.  Is  this  to  be  classed  among  the 
anomalies  which  are  no  evils  ?  Is  not  every 
anomaly  an  evil  which  can  not  be  thought  of, 
which  can  not  be  mentioned  to  a  foreigner,  with- 
out shame  ?  I  call  this  use  of  peerages,  and  I  may 
add  that  of  baronetcies,  a  kind  of  corruption.  It 
is  the  most  potent  of  all  kinds  of  corruption,  when 
the  persons  to  be  corrupted  are  wealthy  men, 
wealthy  upstarts  perhaps,  craving,  as  such  men 
crave,  for  hereditary  rank.  Even  the  social  posi- 
tion which  a  minister  can  partly  bestow,  is  no 
small  source  of  influence  in  such  a  community  as 
ours.  Walpole's  bribery-fund  was  perhaps  .£50,- 
000  a  year :  a  peerage,  it  may  be  even  a  baronet- 
cy, to  an  ambitious  millionaire  is  worth  £50,000. 
Therefore,  it  is  not  wealth  that  will  keep  a  mem- 
ber of  parliament  entirely  above  corruption. 
The  only  thing  that  will  keep  him  entirely  above 
corruption  is  honor. 

There  can  be  no  mistake  as  to  the  objects  with 
which,  in  Pitt's  day,  the  power  of  conferring  peer- 
ages was  used.  "  At  the  close  of  the  elections," 
says  Lord  Stanhope,  "  the  king  showed  his  entire 
approval  of  his  minister  by  the  grant — perhaps  a 
little  lavish — of  seven  new  peerages.  The  others 
were  to  baronies ;  but  one,  Sir  James  Lowther, 
whose  influence  at  Appleby  had  not  been  forgot- 
ten, was  raised  at  once  to  higher  rank,  as  Earl  of 


Pitt.  1 79 

Lonsdale."  I  believe  it  would  be  putting  the 
case  mildly  to  say  that  the  beneficent  influence  of 
Sir  James  Lowther  at  Appleby  was  the  only 
public  service  by  which  he  had  merited  public 
honor.  Irish  peerages,  of  course,  were  granted 
with  even  a  more  shameful  prodigality  than  the 
English,  just  as  the  Irish  pension-list  received 
spies  and  cast-off  mistresses,  whose  names  on  the 
English  pension-list  would  scarcely  have  been  en- 
dured. Pitt  was  on  the  point  of  making  a  loan- 
contractor  an  Irish  peer  because  he  had  parlia- 
mentary influence  in  England.  And  this  is  call- 
ed "recruiting  the  peerage."  So  recruited,  as 
Pym  said  in  another  great  peer-making  epoch, 
"honor  itself  would  become  a  press."  Perhaps 
Pitt  was  sensible  of  this  danger,  when,  in  framing 
the  Regency  Bill,  he  withheld  from  the  Prince  of 
Wales  the  power  of  creating  peers,  which  would 
have  been  exercised  under  the  advice  of  Fox. 

Pitt's  admirers  plead  guilty  on  his  behalf  to 
the  charge  of  not  patronizing  men  of  letteus. 
But  patronage  of  men  of  letters  was  going  out  of 
fashion,  and  it  was  happy  for  literature  that  it 
was  so.  How  can  a  statesman  have  leisure  to 
discriminate  literary  merit  ?  And  if  he  can  not 
discriminate,  how  can  we  desire  that  he  should 
patronize?  Of  course  he  can  be  told  what 
writers  are  on  his  own  side  in  politics,  and  he  can 


180  Three  English  Statesmen. 

see  who  flatter  Mm  in  their  prefaces ;  but  this  is 
not  what  learning  or  the  public  wants.  A  mu- 
nificent despot,  such  as  Louis  XIV.,  may  foster  a 
court  literature :  a  munificent  party-chief,  such  as 
the  Whig  leaders  in  the  reign  of  Anne,  may  foster 
a  party  literature.  A  healthy  literature  needs  no 
fostering  but  that  of  freedom.  The  best  patron 
of  intellect  is  an  educated  people. 

The  newspaper  press  was  not  a  great  power  in 
Pitt's  day.  In  laying  a  stamp  duty  on  newspa- 
pers, he  speaks  of  it  jestingly  as  an  interest  with 
which  the  members  of  the  House  would  desire  to 
stand  well.  If  it  had  been  a  great  power,  he 
would  have  deserved  gratitude  for  not  tampering 
with  journalists.  The  anonymous  press  has 
done  great  service  to  reform,  a  service  which 
nothing  else  could  .have  done.  But  if  its  inde- 
pendence should  ever  be  lost — if  its  great  organs 
should  ever  by  patronage  or  social  influence  be 
made  secretly  subservient  to  the  purposes  of  a  dis- 
honest minister,  if  its  chiefs  should  ever  forget  the 
sacredness  of  their  mission  in  the  "  gilded  saloons" 
of  power — it  would  itself  become  the  most  potent 
and  terrible,  as  well  as  the  vilest,  of  all  the  en- 
gines of  corruption.  Political  evil  is  Protean  in 
its  forms.  New  diseases,  new  dangers  arise  as 
civilization  advances ;  and  the  corruption  of  an 
anonymous  press  is  by  no  means  among  the  least. 


Pitt.  181 

The  reform  of  the  Libel  Law,  in  the  interest 
of  liberty,  received  Pitt's  cordial  support.  He 
was  too  great,  at  all  events,  to  fear  free  criticism ; 
though  we  "may  guess  what  he  would  have  said 
of  the  use  of  attacks  on  private  character  as  a 
mode  of  carrying  on  political  war.  Of  no  other 
law  reforms  was  he  the  author.  Yet  he  had  be- 
fore him  a  code  which  ought  to  have  made  any 
statesman  a  law  reformer — a  code  truly  and  fear- 
fully aristocratic — a  code  which,  for  the  lower 
orders,  was  indeed  written  in  blood — a  code 
which,  while  dueling  and  other  offenses  of  persons 
of  quality  were  practically  overlooked,  inflicted 
capital  punishment  with  an  almost  unparalleled 
recklessness  of  human  life  on  the  petty  offenses 
of  the  poor — a  code  which  was  the  proof  of  a 
deeper  barbarism  than  the  native  ferocity  of  the 
untutored  savage.  This  work  was  left  to  Mack- 
intosh and  Romilly.  Unconsciously  and  invol- 
untarily perhaps  Pitt  contributed  to  law  reform. 
He  put  Eldon  at  the  head  of  the  law.  And  with 
Eldon  at  the  head  of  the  law,  reform  could  no 
longer  be  delayed. 

Humanity,  however,  honors  Pitt  as  the  con- 
stant and  powerful  opponent  of  the  slave-trade. 
Perhaps  he  deserves  in  one  respect  to  be  honored 
above  Wilberforce  and  Clarkson,  inasmuch  as 
the  responsibility  of  the  statesman  is  greater  than 


1 82  Three  English  Statesmen. 

that  of  the  private  reformer.  On  this  question 
he  remained  true  to  his  better  self,  when  on  all 
other  questions  he  had  passed  to  the  side  of  re- 
action. In  1799  he  carried  through  the  Com- 
mons a  bill  for  the  partial  abolition  of  the  trade, 
which,  to  his  great  grief,  was  thrown  out  by  the 
Lords,  on  grounds  which  it  must  be  left  to  the 
advocates  of  hereditary  virtue  to  explain.  His 
speech  against  the  slave-trade  in  1792  is  justly 
regarded  as  about  his  best.  A  few  years  before, 
an  action  relating  to  a  policy  of  insurance  on  the 
value  of  certain  slaves  had  been  tried  in  the 
King's  Bench.  The  question  was,  whether  the 
loss  of  the  slaves  had  been  caused  by  perils  of 
the  sea.  A  slave-ship,  with  four  hundred  and 
forty-two  slaves,  was  bound  from,  the  coast  of 
Guinea  to  Jamaica.  Sixty  of  the  slaves  died  on 
the  passage  from  overcrowding,  but  in  respect  of 
these  it  was  not  contended  that  the  underwriter 
was  liable.  The  captain,  having  missed  Jamaica, 
found  himself  short  of  water,  and  under  the  ap- 
prehension of  scarcity,  but  before  his  crew  and 
passengers  had  been  put  on  short  allowance,  he 
threw  ninety-six  of  the  sickliest  slaves  overboard. 
A  fall  of  rain  now  gave  him  water  for  eleven 
days,  notwithstanding  which  he  drowned  twenty- 
six  more  of  the  slaves.  Ten  in  despair  threw 
themselves  overboard,  for  a  negro  is  human 


Pitt.  183 

enough  to  feel  despair.  The  ship  arrived  in  port 
before  the  water  was  exhausted.  "Thus,"  says 
Mr.  Masaey, "  one  hundred  and  thirty-two  human 
beings,  if  negroes  are  human  beings,  were  willfully 
murdered."  But  the  city  jury  found  that  they 
were  chattels,  lost  by  perils  of  the  sea,  and  gave 
.£32  damages  for  each  slave  thrown  overboard. 
The  court  granted  a  new  trial  on  the  ground  that 
there  was  no  such  necessity  for  drowning  the 
sesond  batch  of  slaves  as  to  constitute  a  loss  by 
perils  of  the  sea.  There  was  not  a  thought,  as 
Mr.  Masey  remarks,  of  proceeding  against  the 
captain  or  his  crew  for  homicide.  And  this  is  a 
law-case  of  the  nation  which  was  conquering  In- 
dia to  introduce  \  higher  civilization,  and  which 
justified  its  treatment  of  the  Africans  on  the 
ground  that  they  were  incorrigible  barbarians. 
One  of  the  proofs  of  African  barbarism  adduced 
by  the  slave-traders  was  that  a  boy  had  been 
put  to  death  by  an  African  because  a  trader  had 
refused  to  buy  him  as  a  slave.  Pitt  replies  that 
the  real  reason  why  the  boy  had  been  put  to 
death  was  that  he  had  three  times  run  away 
from  his  African  master,  who,  by  the  native  cus- 
tom, had  to  pay  his  value  every  time  he  was 
brought  back  to  him,  and  failing  to  dispose  of 
him  to  the  English  slave-traders,  killed  him  in  an- 
ger, or  to  avoid  having  to  pay  for  him  again.  He 


184  Three  English  Statesmen. 

cites  a  law  from  the  West  India  Statute  Book, 
enacting  that  "  if  any  negro  or  other  slave  shall 
withdraw  himself  from  his  master  for  the  'term 
of  six  months,  or  any  slave  that  was  absent  shall 
not  return  within  that  time,  it  shall  be  adjudged 
felony,  and  every  such  person  shall  suffer  death." 
He  then  bids  the  House  compare  the  sudden 
wrath  of  the  wild  African,  which  slew  the  negro 
after  the  third  offense,  with  the  deliberate  legisla- 
tion of  the  civilized  planter,  which  puts  him  to 
death  for  the  first,  and  say  on  which  side  the  bar- 
barism lies.  The  answer  must  be  of  course  that 
the  barbarism  lies  on  the  side  which  has  not  En- 
field  rifies  but  only  bows  and  arrows.  The  slav- 
ery party  of  those  days  had  n<*t  all  the  lights  of 
science  that  the  Anthropologists  have  now;  but 
by  the  light  of  their  own  cupidity  they  had  dis- 
covered the  argument  that  the  negro  was  by 
nature  incapable  of  civilization.  Pitt  asks  what 
a  Roman  senator  would  have  said  of  the  Britons 
— whether  he  would  not  have  said  with  confi- 
dence :  "There  is  a  people  that  will  never  rise  to 
civilization ;  there  is  a  people  destined  never  to 
be  free — a  people  without  the  understanding 
necessary  for  the  attainment  of  useful  arts,  de- 
pressed by  the  hand  of  nature  below  the  level  of 
the  human  species,  and  created  to  form  a  supply 
of  slaves  for  the  rest  of  the  world  ?" 


Pitt.  185 

It  was  deposed  on  the  side  of  the  slave-owners 
that  the  middle  passage  was  a  very  happy  part 
of  the  negro's  life ;  the  air  of  the  hold  was  exact- 
ly suited  to  his  tropical  constitution ;  when  on 
deck  he  made  merry  and  danced  his  national 
dances.  The  privy  council  on  inquiry  found 
that,  the  better  to  secure  the  comfort  of  the 
negroes  in  their  tropical  hold,  they  were  chained 
two  and  two  together  or  fastened  by  ring-bolts  to 
the  lower  deck ;  that  they  were  allowed  one  pint 
of  water  each  daily  under  the  line,  with  two  meals 
of  yams  and  horse-beans ;  and  that  after  their 
meals  they  were  made  to  take  exercise  by  jump- 
ing on  the  deck  in  their  irons  under  the  lash. 
These  were  their  national  dances.  There  was  one 
argument  for  the  slave-trade  which  seems  not  to 
have  been  urged.  The  reformers  did  not  at  this 
time  venture  to  propose  the  abolition  of  slavery ; 
and,  of  the  two,  slave-trading  was  rather  better 
than  slave-breeding. 

Of  the  Church  Pitt  seems  to  have  had  no  con- 
ception, except  as  an  establishment,  the  prizes  of 
which  were  to  be  bestowed  with  some  regard  for 
piety  and  learning,  but  with  a  primary  regard  to 
personal  and  political  connection.  He  gave  Tom- 
line  a  fat  bishopric  and  a  fat  deanery  at  the  same 
time.  One  instance  Lord  Stanhope  has  found  in 
which  he  resisted  the  solicitation  of  a  powerful 


1 86  Three  English  Statesmen. 

man  in  order  to  reward  a  curate  who  had  done 
his  duty.  He  is  disclosed  to  us  in  the  life  of  his 
great  friend  Mr.  Rose,  coolly  using  a  deanery  as  a 
political  bribe,  and  enjoining  his  agent  to  see  that 
the  object  bargained  for  is  secured.  No  thought 
of  purifying  the  Church  as  the  spiritual  organ  of 
the  nation  seems  to  have  arisen  in  his  mind.  A 
strange  spiritual  organ  for  the  nation  the  Church 
then  was.  Lord  Stanhope  has  given  us  the  fol- 
lowing correspondence : 

The  Bishop  of  Lichfield  (Dr.  Cornwallis)  to  Mr.  Pitt. 

"Wimpole  Street,  June  10,  1791. 

"  Sir, — After  the  various  instances  of  neglect  and  con- 
tempt which  Lord  Cornwallis'  and  I  have  experienced,  not 
only  in  violation  of  repeated  assurances,  but  of  the  strong- 
est ties,  it  is  impossible  that  I  should  not  feel  the  late  dis- 
appointment very  deeply. 

"  With  respect  to  the  proposal  concerning  Salisbury,  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  the  See  of  Salisbury  can 
not  be  in  any  respect  an  object  to  me.  The  only  arrange- 
ment which  promises  an  accommodation  in  my  favor  is  the 
promotion  of  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  to  Salisbury,  which 
would  enable  you  to  confer  the  deanery  of  St.  Paul's 
upon  me.  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  etc., 

"  J.  LlCUFIELD  AXD  COVENTRY." 

Mr.  Pitt  to  the  Bishop  of  Lichfield. 

"Downing  Street,  Saturday  night,  June  11,  1791. 
"My  Lord, — On  my  return  to  town  this  afternoon  I 
found  your  lordship's  letter.     I  am  willing  to  hope  that  on 


Pitt.  187 

farther  consideration,  and  recollecting  all  the  circumstances, 
there  are  parts  of  that  letter  which  you  would  yourself 
wish  never  to  have  written. 

"  My  respect  for  your  lordship's  situation,  and  my  regard 
for  Lord  Cornwallis,  prevent  my  saying  more  than  that  un- 
til that  letter  is  recalled  your  lordship  makes  any  farther 
intercourse  between  you  and  me  impossible. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  etc., 

"W.Prrr." 

T7ie  Bishop  of  Lichfield  to  Mr.  Pitt. 

"  Wimpole  Street,  June  11,  1791. 

"  Sir,  —  Under  the  very  great  disappointment  which  I 
have  felt  upon  the  late  occasion,  I  am  much  concerned  that 
I  was  induced  to  make  use  of  expressions  in  my  letter  to 
you  of  which  I  have  since  repented,  and  which  upon  con- 
sideration I  beg  leave  to  retract,  and  I  hope  they  will 
make  no  unfavorable  impression  upon  your  mind. 

"Whatever  may  be  your  thoughts  regarding  the  sub- 
ject-matter of  the  letter,  I  trust  that  you  will  have  the  can- 
dor to  pardon  those  parts  of  it  which  may  appear  to  be 
wanting  in  due  and  proper  respect  to  you. 

"  And  believe  me  to  have  the  honor,  etc., 

"  J.  LICHFIELD  AOT>  COVENTRY." 


Mr.  Pitt  to  the  Bishop  of  Lichfield. 

"Downing  Street,  June  12,  1791. 

"  My  Lord,  —  I  have  this  morning  received  the  honor  of 
your  lordship's  letter,  dated  the  llth,  and  have  great  satis- 
faction in  being  able  to  dismiss  from  my  mind  any  impres- 
sion occasioned  by  a  paragraph  in  the  former  letter  which 
I  received  from  you. 

"  With  respect  to  any  farther  arrangement,  I  can  only 


1 88  Three  English  Statesmen. 

say  that  I  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln  would  wish  to  remove  to  Salisbury ;  but,  if  he  were, 
I  should  certainly  have  no  hesitation  in  recommending 
your  lordship  for  the  deanery  of  St.  Paul's. 

"  \  have  the  honor  to  be,  etc., 

"  WILLIAM  PITT." 

He  that  desireth  a  bishopric,  desireth  a  good 
thing,  but  he  that  desireth  a  bishopric  and  a  dean- 
ery together,  desireth  a  still  better  thing :  so,  no 
doubt,  Dr.  Cornwallis  would  have  interpreted  the 
Scripture.  And,  be  *it  observed,  the  covetousness 
of  the  man,  his  meanness,  his  flagrant  unworthi- 
ness  to  hold  any  spiritual  office,  make  no  bad  im- 
pression whatever  on  Pitt's  mind.  The  only  thing 
that  makes  a  bad  impression  on  his  mind  is  the 
injurious  expressions  touching  himself.  When 
these  have  been  retracted,  he  is  quite  ready  to 
promote  Dr.  Cornwallis  higher  in  the  Church. 

In  another  case  we  have  an  aspirant  resorting  to 
the  ingenious  artifice  of  writing  to  thank  the  min- 
ister for  a  blissful  rumor  which  assigned  to  him  a 
mitre  then  vacant.  The  minister  has  the  pain  of 
informing  him  that  the  rumor  is  unfounded. 

Lord  Stanhope  gives  the  correspondence  be- 
tween Pitt  and  Dr.  Cornwallis,  with  the  warning 
that  such  a  case  could  not  occur  now.  A  case  so 
gross  and  palpable  could  not  occur  now.  But 
may  not  things  really  just  as  bad  occur  now  ? 


Pitt.  189 

May  not  a  political  tactician,  and  one  to  whom, 
regard  for  spiritual  interests  could  scarcely  be 
ascribed  except  in  jest,  use  spiritual  preferment 
to  purchase  the  political  support  of  a  great  relig- 
ious party  as  cynically  as  ever  the  support  of  the 
lords  of  rotten  boroughs  was  purchased  by  Pitt  ? 
May  we  not,  in  return,  hear  religious  adulation 
poured  forth  by  Pharisaic  lips  to  a  patron  whose 
only  title  to  respect,  in  a  religious  point  of  view,  is 
that  he  is  not  a  Pharisee  ?  May  we  not  see  men 
who  profess  to  be  pre-eminently  Christian  sup- 
porting a  policy  pre-eminently  un-Christian,  be- 
cause its  author  puts  ecclesiastical  power  into  their 
hands  ?  May  we  not  see  a  religious  connection, 
yesterday  independent,  to-day  laying  down  its  in- 
dependence and  its  influence  for  good  in  the  ante- 
chamber of  a  minister  ?  May  we  not  see  divines, 
the  authorized  guardians  of  the  truth,  shaping 
their  doctrine  to  the  taste  of  the  great  bishop- 
maker  of  the  day  ?  And  if  this  is  so,  are  we  really 
much  better  off  now  than  we  were  in  the  days  of 
Pitt  and  Dr.  Cornwallis  ? 

The  highest  rule  of  duty  which  Pitt  knew  in 
the  use  of  Church  patronage  he  kept.  He  was 
stanch  to  his  friends.  He  had  high  words  with 
the  king  because  the  king  insisted  on  making 
Moore,  instead  of  Tomline,  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury. Tomline  evidently  thought  that  though 


190  Three  English  Statesmen. 

the  country  was  in  the  midst  of  a  great  war,  the 
government  ought  to  have  resigned. 

Whether  Pitt  had  been  at  all  touched  by  the 
scepticism  of  his  century  or  not,  he  had  imbibed 
its  toleration.  He  was  always  in  favor  of  Ro- 
man Catholic  Emancipation.  He  was  not  disin- 
clined to  the  repeal  of  the  Test  and  Corporation 
Acts.  But  he  consulted  the  bishops.  It  is  won- 
derful that  of  fourteen  bishops  two  were  in  favor 
of  the  repeal.  We  maintain  a  political  hierarchy, 
and  we  must  accept  the  natural  results.  It  does 
not  lie  in  the  mouths  of  Non-conformists,  who 
have  political  power  in  their  hands  and  fail  to 
use  it  for  the  assertion  of  religious  freedom,  to 
rail  at  the  evils  of  the  Establishment;  for  the 
blame  of  those  evils  rests  on  them.  I  say  it  in 
no  spirit  of  irony,  but  with  sincere  conviction; 
the  marvelous  thing  in  the  character  of  the  state 
bishops  is  not  the  illiberality  of  the  many,  but 
the  liberality  of  the  few.  Pitt's  episcopal  ad- 
visers erred  under  the  almost  irresistible  pressure 
of  the  circumstances  in  which,  not  their  own  act, 
but  the  act  of  the  community,  had  placed  them. 
Yet  could  they  have  had  their  way,  these  ques- 
tions would  long  ago  have  been  solved  by  civil 
war.  Warned  by  his  oracles — the  keepers  of 
the  state  conscience — Pitt  resisted  a  motion  for 
the-  repeal  of  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts. 


Pitt.  191 

You  can  see  that,  like  Peel  resisting  Catholic 
Emancipation  and  the  repeal  of  the  Corn"  Laws, 
he  is  struggling  against  the  dawning  light  within 
him,  as  well  as  against  the  arguments  from  with- 
out. His  reasoning  is  'founded  on  the  assump- 
tion with  which  we  are  now  being  made  again 
familiar,  that  no  man  has  any  political  rights,  and 
that  it  rests  entirely  wTith  the  dominant  party  in 
the  state  to  dole  out  to  their  fellow-citizens  just 
as  much  of  political  freedom  and  justice  as  they 
may  think  compatible  with  the  ascendancy  of 
their  own  opinions  and  with  the  safety  of  the 
political  arrangements  by  which  that  ascendancy 
is  preserved.  Such  advantages  as  he  gains  are 
due  to  the  weakness  of  his  opponents,  who, 
though  their  hearts  were  on  the  side  of  justice, 
had  not  yet  learned,  as  indeed  few  public  men 
have  even  now  learned,  to  examine  boldly  the 
duty  of  the  state  in  matters  of  opinion.  The  re- 
volting profanation  of  the  sacrament,  which  the 
Test  and  Corporation  Act  involved,  as  it  did  not 
shock  the  clergy,  naturally  did  not  shock  the 
man  of  the  world. 

The  commutation  of  tithes  into  a  corn-rent 
was  Pitt's  only  Church  reform.  It  was  destined 
mainly  for  Ireland.  I  have  seen  among  some 
papers  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  a  picture  of  the  levy- 
ing of  tithe  in  a  Catholic's  farm-yard  by  a  Prot- 


192  Three  English  Statesmen. 

estant  parson,  who  is  just  seizing  the  tenth  pig, 
while  'soldiers  with  fixed  bayonets  stand  by  to 
support  the  law.  The  picture  is  a  caricature  of 
course,  but  caricature  itself  could  scarcely  add 
deformity  to  the  truth.  Pitt,  in  his  letter  to  the 
lord-lieutenant,  hopes  that  the  Irish  clergy  will 
take  a  sober  and  dispassionate  view  of  the  mat- 
ter; that  they  will  understand  how  much  easier 
it  is  for  them,  by  persisting  in  an  odious  system, 
to  imperil  the  government  than  for  the  govern- 
ment to  uphold  them ;  that  they  will  propose  an 
accommodation,  which,  originating  with  them, 
would  not  be  unbecoming.  He  appealed  for  a 
sober  and  dispassionate  consideration  of  an  angry 
question  to  men  whose  whole  existence  was  a 
fierce  conflict  with  a  hostile  nation.  His  plan 
was  rejected,  and  he  gained  nothing  but  the 
credit  with  posterity  of  having  been  before  his 
time. 

To  pass  from  home  government  to  the  depend- 
encies, Pitt  had  thrown  out  the  India  Bill  of 
Fox,  but  he  could  not  help  bringing  in  one  of 
his  own.  The  company's  servants — their  cupid- 
ity inflamed  to  the  utmost  by  the  sight  of  such 
gorgeous  booty — had  burst  through  the  frail  bar- 
rier which  divides  the  rapacious  trader  from  the 
robber,  and  were  heaping  up  fortunes  by  violence 
and  fraud,  hardly  paralleled,  to  borrow  the  words 


Pitt.  193 

of  Mr.  Massey,  in  the  dark  and  bloody  annals  of 
conquest.  Pitt  was  trammeled  by  his  opposi- 
tion to  Fox's  measure,  and  by  his  alliance  with 
the  East  India  interest  and  the  nabobs  who  sat 
for  its  rotten  boroughs.  The  result  was  a  half 
measure — the  double  government  which  sham- 
bled on  in  its  awkwardness  till  the  Sepoy  Mu- 
tiny, by  breaking  up  the  army  on  which  the  do- 
minion of  the  company  rested,  and  thus  destroy- 
ing one  of  the  two  powers,  gave  the  system  a 
final  blow.  The  abuse  of  Indian  patronage,  the 
dread  of  which  had  been  worked  against  Fox's 
bill,  was  not  avoided  by  that  of  Pitt.  The  cor- 
rupt dominion  of  Dundas  in  Scotland  was  main- 
tained to  a  great  extent  at  the  expense  of  the 
Hindoo.  And  we  soon  find  Lord  Sydney,  an 
honorable  member  of  the  cabinet,  complaining 
of  the  monopoly  of  army  appointments  in  India 
by  Scotchmen;  of  " insatiable  ambition,"  "sordid 
avarice,"  "  base  work,"  and  "the  character  of  men 
whom  he  had  imprudently  treated  with  great 
openness,  but  who  should  never  come  into  his 
room  again  while  he  had  a  bolt  to  his  door." 
Perhaps  there  is  still  something  in  the  feelings 
of  Scotchmen,  even  of  pious  Scotchmen,  toward 
the  oppressed  people  of  dependencies,  which 
savors  of  the  old  time.  It  may  be  doubted, 
however,  whether  the  failure  to  incorporate  India 


194  Three  English  Statesmen. 

completely  with  England  ought  to  be  reckoned 
among  the  demerits  of  the  bill.  Writers  on  the 
government  of  dependencies  have  not  sufficiently 
considered  the  consequences  of  the  relation  to  the 
character  of  the  imperial  country.  The  effect  of 
incorporating  a  vast  despotism  like  India  with 
a  free  nation  perhaps  remains  yet  to  be  seen. 
There  is  a  poison  which  is  imbibed  daily  though 
it  is  not  perceived ;  which  was  imbibed,  though 
it  was  not  perceived,  by  Imperial  Spain. 

In  the  case  of  Hastings,  the  accusers  being 
Whigs,  the  Tories  of  course  took  the  part  of  the 
accused,  with  whom,  indeed,  as  a  representative 
of  arbitrary  and  sanguinary  violence,  they  had 
sympathies  of  a  more  specific  kind.  Pitt,  as  is 
well  known,  turned  round  in  the  middle,  and  to 
the  dismay  of  the  mass  of  his  party,  who  voted 
against  him,  carried  the  impeachment  by  the 
votes  under  his  absolute  command.  His  conver- 
sion was  so  mysterious  that  it  was  ascribed  to 
jealousy  of  Hastings.  But  we  may  safely  regard 
it  as  conscientious,  and  as  having  been  delayed 
only  by  his  inability  to  look  thoroughly  into  the 
case  at  an  earlier  stage.  Hastings  was  a  great 
criminal,  and  one  who,  for  the  honor  and  in  the 
highest  interest  of  the  country,  ought  to  have 
been  brought  to  justice ;  though  he  might  have 
pleaded,  in  extenuation  of  his  guilt,  the  evil  ne- 


Pitt.  195 

cessities  of  conquest,  for  which  his  masters  were 
more  responsible  than  he.  He  was  absolved,  and 
afterward  honored,  because  his  crimes  had  served, 
or  were  supposed  to  have  served,  the  aggrandize- 
ment of  England.  And  if  the  aggrandizement 
of  England  is  a  redeeming  motive  before  God 
as  well  as  before  the  House  of  Lords,  all,  no 
doubt,  will  be  well.  Then  there  will  be  no 
danger  of  retribution,  though  our  press,  reflecting 
too  faithfully  the  morality  of  the  nation,  should 
preach,  under  the  thin  disguise  of  rhetoric,  doc- 
trines which  in  their  naked  form  could  be  avow- 
ed only  in  the  cavern  of  a  bandit  or  on  the  deck 
of  a  buccaneer. 

Hastings  and  his  party  complained,  with  some 
reason,  of  the  length  of  a  trial  conducted  by  a 
tribunal  the  dilatoriness  of  which  equaled  its  un- 
trustwor.thiness  for  the  purposes  of  justice.  It 
was  about  this  time  that  a  woman  died  in  Devon 
County  Jail,  after  an  imprisonment  of  forty-five 
years,  for  a  debt  of  £19. 

Parliament,  however,  displayed  in  the  case  of 
Hastings  a  higher  sense  of  justice  and  of  the  na- 
tional honor  than  it  displays  in  cases  of  wrong 
done  to  the  subject  races  in  the  present  day. 
The  conscience  of  the  nation  had  not  then  become 
seared  by  the  long  exercise  of  empire ;  a  pervert- 
ed code  of  imperial  morality  had  not  had  time  to 


196  Three  English  Statesmen. 

grow  up,  nor  had  the  plea  that  an  act  was  done 
in  the  interest  of  the  dominant  race  yet  become 
familiar  and  persuasive  to  English  minds.  On 
these  questions  we  grow  worse;  and  we  shall 
probably  continue  to  grow  worse  till  for  us,  as 
for  the  American  slave-owner,  the  end  arrives, 
and  we  find  that  neither  the  approbation  of  our 
press,  nor  the  acquiescence  of  our  state  clergy,  is 
the  connivance  of  the  Power  which,  after  all,  rules 
the  world. 

Adam  Smith  had  proposed  that  the  colonies 
should  be  represented  in  the  British  Parliament. 
Such  was  his  cure  for  the  conflict  between  impe- 
rial supremacy  and  colonial  liberty,  which  was 
gathering  to  a  head  while  he  wrote.  At  the 
time,  it  was  answered  that  this  plan  would  be 
impracticable  on  account  of  the  distance.  With 
regard  to  the  Australian  colonies,  the  same  objec- 
tion would  be  fatal  now.  You  could  not,  after  a 
dissolution,  wait  till  the  returns  to  the  writs  had 
been  made  from  Sidney  and  Melbourne,  before 
re-assembling  Parliament.  But  the  more  fatal  ob- 
jection is  that  the  colonies  have  national  Parlia- 
ments of  their  own,  and  that  to  let  them  send 
members  to  the  national  Parliament  of  England 
also,  and  have  a  voice  in  our  national  questions, 
while  we  should  have  none  in  theirs,  would  in- 
volve a  confusion  of  functions  full  of  absurdity 


*.  Pitt.  197 

and  injustice.  If  you  have  any  common  assem- 
bly for  the  mother  country  and  the  colonies,  it 
must  be  a  Federal  Council,  dealing  with  the  in- 
terests of  the  empire  apart  from  those  of  the  sev- 
eral nations :  and  this  Federal  Council  must  in 
Federal  questions  be  above  the  national  govern- 
ment of  Great  Britain,  an  arrangement  which 
Great  Britain  would  never  endure.  A  moral, 
commercial,  and  diplomatic  union  of  all  the  com- 
munities of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  including  what 
must  soon  become  the  greatest  of  those  communi- 
ties, the  United  States  of  America,  is  no  dream, 
and  if  a  national  policy  is  pursued,  may  be  made 
a  glorious  reality.  But  a  political  union  of  all 
these  communities,  or  of  those  still  under  the 
nominal  rule  of  Britain,  scattered  as  they  are  over 
the  globe,  is  a  dream,  and  one  from  which  we 
shall  soon  awake.  Colonial  Emancipation,  while 
the  tie  of  affection  remains  unbroken,  is  the  only 
mode  of  securing  that  to  which  we  all  alike  cling, 
that  of  which  we  all  alike  are  proud.  There  is 
no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  accompanied 
with  a  mutual  retention  of  the  rights  of  citizen- 
ship, so  that  an  Englishman  might,  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  be  an  Australian  in  Australia,  and 
an  Australian  be  an  Englishman  here.  There  is 
no  reason  why  the  colonies  should  not  keep  the 
old  flag.  The  only  thing  which  need  be  given 


198  Three  English  Statesmen. 

up,  and  this  Nature  proclaims  aloud  must  be 
given  up,  is  the  political  dependence  of  a  nation 
on  one  side  of  the  globe  upon  a  nation  at  the 
other.  Toward  Colonial  Emancipation  Pitt  made 
the  first  step,  still  partly  guided  herein  by  his 
great  teacher,  who,  though  he  had  proposed  a 
plan  which  was  not  feasible  for  the  political  in- 
corporation of  the  colonies  with  the  mother  coun- 
try, had  placed  their  uselessness  as  dependencies 
in  a  clear  light.  The  Canadas,  which  had  re- 
mained ours  when  we  lost  the  British  Colonies  in 
America,  had  hitherto  been  governed  as  depend- 
encies. Pitt  now  gave  each  of  them  a  Parlia- 
ment of  its  own,  and  thus,  in  fact,  made  them  sep- 
arate nations,  though  to  complete  the  severance 
would  have  been  a  measure  at  once  out  of  the 
range  of  his  vision,  and  beyond  his  power.  The 
people  of  French  Canada  being  Catholics,  their 
admission  to  political  rights  was,  in  fact,  Catholic 
Emancipation.  The  good  king  and  his  spiritual 
advisers  appear  to  have  made  no  objection  to  this 
feature  of  the  plan.  Perhaps  it  was  thought  that 
Providence,  for  commercial  objects,  winked  in  a 
colony  at  that  which  it  would  have  visited  as  im- 
piety at  home.  There  is  a  beautiful  plasticity  in 
our  political  religion.  Intent  on  producing  an- 
other England  beyond  the  Atlantic,  Pitt  provided 
for  the  endowment  of  a  State  Church,  and  for  the 


Pitt.  199 

creation  of  a  peerage  in  the  colony.  Ungrateful 
Nature  has  refused  both  boons ;  though,  in  the 
plans  now  framed  for  Canadian  Confederation, 
there  is  a  proposal  for  a  mock  House  of  Lords, 
not  hereditary,  but  for  life,  the  proper  materials 
for  which  the  colonies,  from  the  instability  of 
wealth  and  the  absence  of  any  social  distinctions 
there,  will  fail  to  furnish,  and  which,  if  it  is  set 
up,  will,  I  venture  to  predict,  in  the  end  breed 
confusion.  Pitt  had  no  philosophy  of  history  to 
teach  him  that  progress  is  the  law  of  things,  that 
though  the  essence  of  religion  and  morality  does 
not  change,  all  besides  is  ever  changing,  that  the 
scroll  is  not  yet  all  unrolled,  and  that  Providence 
does  not  mean  merely  to  repeat  itself  over  again 
in  the  new  world.  He  did  not  know  that  feudal- 
ism had  performed  its  part  in  the  development  of 
humanity,  that  of  a  school-master,  to  train  society 
for  a  larger  freedom ;  that  it  was  bound  up  with 
military  aristocracy,  the  offspring  of  conquest, 
which  with  the  age  of  conquest  and  military  as- 
cendancy passes  away;  that  it  was  based  on  a 
tenure  of  land,  which  the  English  race  had  dis- 
carded from  the  moment  when  it  set  foot  on  the 
new  shore.  What  is  more,  Pitt  when  he  tried 
the  experiment  had  not,  like  us,  seen  the  experi- 
ment fail. 

Nor  is  Pitt's  sagacity  much  to  be  impeached 


2OO  Three  English  Statesmen. 

because,  under  an  unhappy  star,  he  founded  Bot- 
any Bay.  Leave  Nature  to  herself  and  she  will 
choose  the  germs  of  new  nations  well.  Wise,  be- 
yond the  reach  of  human  wisdom,  in  all  her  proc- 
esses, she  does  not  forget  her  wisdom  in  this  most 
momentous  process  of  propagating  humanity  over 
its  destined  abodes.  Careful  in  the  selection  of 
the  right  seed  for  a  plant,  she  is  not  careless  in 
selecting  the  right  colonists.  Left  to  herself  she 
selects  the  flower  of  English  worth,  the  founders 
of  New  England ;  when  man  undertakes  to  select 
for  her,  he  selects  the  convicts  of  Botany  Bay,  and 
taints  the  being  of  future  communities  at  its 
source  with  the  pestilence  of  a  moral  lazar-house. 
But  the  severance  of  the  American  Colonies  was 
supposed  to  be  a  fatal  blow  to  the  prosperity  of 
England,  which  only  thq  foundation  of  new  colo- 
nies could  countervail,  though,  as  we  all  know,  it 
proved  an  immense  gain,  and  turned  the  driblet 
of  restricted  commerce  into  a  mighty  current  of 
wealth.  Our  jails  too,  dens  of  the  most  hideous 
depravity,  filth,  and  cruelty,  called  loudly  for  de- 
pletion, and  the  dream  was  a  flattering  one  of  turn- 
ing the  felony  of  England  into  the  virtue  and  in- 
dustry of  other  lands.  Still  mischief  was  done, 
mischief  of  which  the  traces  are  not  wholly  effaced 
yet.  But  I  am  falling  into  a  repetition  of  what  I 
have  said  on  the  subject  of  colonies  elsewhere. 


Pitt.  201 

Toward  the  American  Colonists  Chatham's  son 
inherited  the  feelings  of  Chatham.  Not  only  did 
he,  as  a  member  of  the  Shelburne  government, 
gladly  take  part  in  making  peace  with  them,  but 
he  desired  in  matters  of  trade  to  treat  them,  to 
the  utmost  of  his  power,  as  though  they  were  En- 
glishmen still.  And  they  are  Englishmen  still, 
if  the  England  which,  notwithstanding  all  that 
the  evil  agents  of  a  selfish  faction  have  done  to 
breed  bitterness  between  us,  her  Colonists  still 
love,  will  show  that  she  still  loves  them.  This 
was  treason  and  revolution  yesterday  :  it  is  ortho- 
doxy and  Conservatism  to-day. 

It  is  said  of  Sir  Kobert  Peel  by  a  French 
statesman,  that  he  had  no  foreign  policy  but  peace 
and  good-will  among  nations.  The  same  thing 
may  be  said  of  Pitt  during  the  first  ten  years  of 
his  power.  He  was  remarkably  free  from  the 
vice  of  diplomacy.  He  did  not  meddle  except 
when  he  was  called  upon  to  do  so,  and  then  he 
quietly  and  with  dignity  maintained  the  honor  of 
the  country.  It  is  well  for  the  nation  when  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  is  the  most  powerful 
man  in  the  government,  because  his  ambition  is 
opposed  to  war.  The  son  of  Chatham,  while  he 
was  himself,  and  before  he  became  the  organ  of 
a  panic-stricken  and  infuriated  faction,  was  emi- 
nently a  peace  minister.  In  1792,  while  all  the 

12 


2O2  Three  English  Statesmen. 

world  was  arming,  lie  was  cutting  down  arma- 
ments; his  army  that  year  was  only  18,000  men, 
and  his  army  estimates  only  £1,800,000.  When 
shall  we  see  such  estimates  again  ? 

Once,  indeed,  the  minister  was  led  into  making 
a  demonstration  against  the  aggrandizement  of 
Russia,  in  which  he  failed  to  carry  the  nation 
with  him.  There  are  politicians  who  would  say 
that  he  stood  alone  in  his  prophetic  wisdom. 
Probably  he  would  at  the  time  have  succeeded 
in  exciting  the  nation  more  if  India  had  then  been 
to  us  what  it  is  now,  and  the  safety  of  the  ap- 
proaches to  it  had  been  as  great  an  object  of  so- 
licitude. The  Crimean  war  must  be  set  down 
partly  to  the  account  of  India ;  and  so  must  the 
false  bent  given  to  our  diplomacy  in  the  East,  as 
will  appear  when,  in  the  question  of  the  Eastern 
nationalities,  Nature  has  asserted  her  power,  and 
produced,  in  spite  of  diplomacy,  Christian  commu- 
nities which  by  a  more  genial  policy  we  might 
have  made  our  friends.  This  is  not  the  place  for 
a  discussion  of  the  Russian  peril.  Mr.  Massey 
holds  the  usual  language  on  the  subject :  "  Russia 
had  begun  to  unfold  those  gigantic  schemes  of 
aggrandizement  which  modern  statesmen  have 
justly  regarded  as  menacing  the  independence 
and  civilization  of  the  continent  with  a  new  ir- 
ruption from  the  northern  hive."  The  old  irrup- 


Pitt.  203 

tions  from  the  northern  hive  were  those  of  nomad 
hordes.  They  were  in  a  word  not  invasions  but 
vast  migrations.  The  modern  Russians,  however 
backward,  are  a  settled  nation,  and  will  scarcely, 
like  the  Goths  and  Huns  of  old,  put  their  wives 
and  children  into  their  wagons  and  descend  with 
their  herds  upon  the  south.  The  Christianity 
which  ought  to  restrain  their  lusts  of  military 
aggrandizement  is  unhappily  itself  neutralized  by 
a  State  Church,  which,  as  usual,  instead  of  being 
the  reproving  conscience,  makes  itself  the  servile 
organ  of  the  passions  of  the  government  by 
which  it  is  maintained.  But  it  is  in  the  govern- 
ment, not  in  the  Russian  people,  that  this  lust  of 
aggrandizement  resides.  In  this  case  also  the  be- 
ginning of  political  freedom  will  probably  be  the 
end  of  military  rapacity ;  and,  since  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  serfs,  the  beginning  of  political  free- 
dom can  scarcely  be  far  distant.  The  fear  that 
Europe  will  soon  be  either  Republican  or  Cossack 
does  not  seem  to  me  chimerical ;  but  the  fear  that 
it  will  be  Cossack  does. 

The  minister  also  met  with  a  check  in  bring- 
ing forward  a  proposition,  which  was  not  his 
own  but  the  Duke  of  Richmond's,  for  the  forti- 
fication of  the  arsenals.  Party  came  in  as  usual, 
regardless  of  the  safety  of  the  country  when  the 
paramount  interest  of  faction  was  to  be  served. 


204  Three  English  Statesmen. 

But  the  feeling  upon  which  party  played  seems 
to  have  been  confidence  in  the  sufficiency  of  the 
wooden  walls.  The  nation  might,  at  all  events, 
and  may  still  truly  say,  that  government  has  at 
its  command  a  great  fleet,  maintained  at  a  vast 
expense  to  the  nation,  and  that  it  is  bound,  with 
this  fleet,  to  maintain  an  ascendancy  in  the  Brit- 
ish waters,  which  if  it  would  do,  we  should  stand 
in  little  need  of  fortifications.  But  the  fleet  is 
scattered  in  petty  squadrons  over  the  world,  for 
the  nominal  defense  of  distant  colonies  and  de- 
pendencies, and  for  the  hollow  pretense,  which 
could  not  now  be  sustained  six  months  after  the 
oufbreak  of  a  great  war,  of  dominating  in  the 
Mediterranean.  The  country  is  continually  pour- 
ing millions  into  the  naval  estimates,  only  to  be 
told  that  its  own  shores  are  defenseless,  and  that 
millions  more  must  be  spent  in  fortifying  them 
against  French  invasion. 

As  a  member  of  Shelburne's  government,  Pitt 
had  been  called  on  to  defend,  among  the  other 
articles  of  the  peace  with  America  and  her  allies, 
the  abandonment  of  the  clause  in  the  treaty  of 
Utrecht,  providing  for  the  demolition  of  Dunkirk. 
North  denounced  the  article,  on  the  ground  that 
though  Dunkirk  was  no  longer  of  real  impor- 
tance, the  presence  of  our  commissioners  on  the 
enemy's  territory  was  to  be  desired,  because  it 


Pitt.  205 

perpetuated  the  memory  of  former  victories,  ex- 
alted the  dignity  of  Great  Britian,  and  humbled 
the  pride  of  France.  Such  has  hitherto  "been  the 
code  of  honor  among  nations.  Among  men  true 
dignity  is  inoffensive,  and  he  who  is  most  careful 
of  the  honor  of  others  is  thought  likely  to  be 
most  careful  of  his  own.  Shelburne,  like  Chat- 
ham and  Stanhope — two  ministers  of  spirit  as 
well  as  sense — before  him,  had  proposed  to  give 
Gibraltar  up  to  Spain  for  an  equivalent.  Three 
times  round  that  barren  rock  had  the  waters — 
Nature's  destined  portal  of  peaceful  commerce, 
and  her  destined  highway  of  kindly  intercourse 
among  the  nations  of  Christendom — been  dyed 
with  Christian  blood  and  covered  with  floating 
agony.  It  does  not  command  the  entrance  to  the 
Mediterranean.  It  has  made  Spain  our  enemy  in 
every  war  of  the  European  Powers.  When 
almost  paralyzed  by  decrepitude,  she  dragged 
her  feeble  limbs  again  and  again  to  the  attack, 
that  she  might  remove  this  stain  on  her  escutch- 
eon, this  eyesore  of  her  honor.  The  recovery  of 
it  would  be  the  greatest  bribe  that  a  military  ad- 
venturer rising  to  power  in  Spain  could  offer  to 
his  countrymen :  and  perhaps  the  day  may  not 
be  far  distant  when  such  a  crisis  may  occur.  But 
let  us  by  no  means  exercise  any  foresight  in  the 
matter.  Foresight  is  unworthy  of  a  practical 


206  Three  English  Statesmen. 

nation.  A  passage  m  one  of  Pitt's  letters  seems 
to  indicate  that  he  opposed  Lord  Shelburne  on 
this  occasion.  But,  if  he  did,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  we  had  then  no  other  station  in 
the  Mediterranean.  Minorca  had  been  lost : 
Malta  was  not  yet  ours.  Pitt  said  "  some  naval 
station  in  the  Mediterranean  is  absolutely  indis- 
pensable, but  none  can  be  found  so  desirable  and 
secure  as  Malta."  If  we  cite  great  authorities, 
we  must  remember  the  circumstances  under  which 
they  spoke.  But  again  I  am  repeating  what  I 
have  said  more  than  once  before. 

In  the  midst  of  his  useful  course  Pitt  was 
almost  thrown  out  of  power  by  the  illness  of  the 
king,  which,  if  it  had  lasted  longer,  would  have 
made  the  Prince  of  Wales  regent,  and  transfer- 
red the  government  to  his  friends;  one  of -the 
many  warnings  to  nations  in  search  of  a  consti- 
tution not  to  embrace  ours  without  "considering 
all  the  liabilities  of  so  peculiar  and  complex  a 
machine.  The  Prince  of  Wales,  partly  from  filial 
feeling,  partly  perhaps  like  D'Orleans  Egalite, 
for  the  sake  of  another  forbidden  pleasure,  flirted 
with  Liberal  principles,  which,  however,  of  course, 
lost  forever  their  place  in  what  he  was  fond  of 
calling  his  heart,  the  instant  that  his  foot  touched 
the  throne.  The  debates  on  the  Eegency  Bill, 
under  the  guise  of  a  great  constitutional  discus- 


Pitt,  207 

sion,  were  a  scuffle  for  power  between  two  fac- 
tions which  had  accidentally  changed  their  posi- 
tions with  regard  to  royalty  for  the  moment,  and 
got  hold  each  of  the  other's  cant ;  so  that  if  Pitt 
could  say  that  he  had  un-Whigged  Fox,  Fox 
might  have  said  that  he*  had  un-Toried  Pitt. 
These  scenes  revealed  on  the  critical  eve  of  the 
French  Eevolution  the  scandals  of  Royalty — a 
king,  in  whom  the  ray  of  reason  barely  flickered, 
swaying  the  destinies  of  a  nation — the  princes 
mocking  at  the  affliction  of  their  father — the 
queen  receiving  with  complacency  the  duelist 
who  had  nearly  killed  her  detested  child.  Not 
long  before  had  occurred  the  episode  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  and  Mrs.  Fitzherbert,  in  which 
the  prince  broke  every  law  of  honor,  and  put  up 
his  bosom  friend  to  tell  a  lie  for  him  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  there  are  extenuating 
circumstances  in  this  case.  First,  the  prince,  like 
all  princes,  had  been  sacrificed  to  the  public  good : 
he  had  never  known  equal  friendship,  heard  the 
voice  of  truth,  or  learned  self-control  and  honor 
in  the  school  of  other  men.  Seolhdly,  his  love 
for  Mrs.  Fitzherbert  was  undoubtedly  deep  and 
sincere ;  a  lawful  marriage  with  her  might  have 
been  the  means  of  reclaiming  him.  Thirdly,  he 
had  not  made  the  laws  which,  in  the  case  of  royal 
marriages,  sacrificed  affection  to  policy;  and,  heir 


208  Three  English  Statesmen. 

to  a  kingdom  as  he  was,  he  might  have  envied 
the  meanest  servant  in  his  train  whose  hand  and 
heart  were  free.  He  was  afterward  married  to 
a  woman  whom  he  had  never  seen,  and  the  sight 
of  whom  caused  him  at  once  to  call  for  "brandy, 
while  farther  researches  have  revealed  that  he 
drowned  the  horrors  of  his  wedding  in  an  enor- 
mous potation  of  liqueur.  His  mother  had  been 
called  down  from  her  nursery  one  afternoon  to 
dine  at  table  with  the  family,  and  introduced  to 
a  stranger,  who  after  dinner  led  her  into  the  next 
room,  and  went  through  the  form  of  marriage 
with  her  as  the  deputy  of  the  King  >  of  England. 
When  she  was  brought  to  St.  James's,  never  hav- 
ing seen  her  destined  husband,  she  was  going  to 
fall  down  at  the  feet  of  the  wrong  man. 

The  people  showed  their  sympathy  and  their 
loyalty  when  the  king  recovered.  They  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth,  and  engraved  on  their 
rings  and  snuff-boxes  the  words  of  the  honest 
Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow:  "When  I  forget  my 
king  may  my  God  forget  me."  They  had  not 
heard  Burke'lVexclamation,  "The  best  thing  he 
can  do  for  you,"  or  the  more  pungent  but  highly 
improper  comment  of  the  graceless  Wilkes ;  nor 
had  they  seen  Pitt  run  out  of  the  House  crying, 
"  Oh  what  a  rascal."  In  the  course  of  the  great 
struggle  between  the  king's  party  and  that  of  the 


Pitt. 


209 


prince,  when  the  king's  friends  were  holding  a 
cabinet  at  Windsor,  as  they  rose  to  go,  the  honest 
lord  chancellor's  hat  was  missing.  It  was  brought 
to  him  from  the  prince's  room. 

And  now  the  sun  of  Pitt's  glory  has  reached 
its  zenith.  It  declines  toward  the  West  and 
night. 


PITT. -II. 


IV. 

P  ITT.  —  II. 

AN  optimist  view  of  history  will  not  hold 
good,  any  more  than  an  optimist  view  of  nature. 
All  will  be  well  in  the  sum  of  things,  but  in  the 
mean  time  calamities  occur.  No  greater  calamity 
ever  occurred,  no  greater  disaster  ever  befell  the 
cause  of  human  progress,  as  it  seems  to  me,  than 
the  revolution  which  brought  the  Liberal  move- 
ment of  the  eighteenth  century  to  a  violent  crisis 
in  France.  Apart  from  the  faults  of  political 
character,  the  want  of  self-control,  the  want  of  mu- 
tual confidence,  the  levity,  and  worst  of  all  the  cru- 
elty, which  have  marked  all  their  revolutions,  the 
French  were  from  their  circumstances,  and  from 
the  evil  training  which  they  had  undergone,  quite 
unfit  to  take  the  political  destinies  of  the  world 
into  their  hands.  The  abuses  of  their  own  gov- 
ernment were  so  flagrant,  the  obsoleteness  of  their 
own  institutions  was  so  manifest,  that  the  thought 
of  caution  and  moderation  was  banished  from 
their  minds,  and  they  were  content  with  nothing 


214  Three  English  Statesmen. 

short  of  introducing  a  new  order  of  things,  a  new 
political  creation  as  it  were,  dating  from  the  day 
of  their  revolt,  which  they  sought  to  extend  to  na- 
tions unwilling  to  accept  it,  or  unripe  for  a  great 
change.  They  had  no  middle  class  accustomed  to 
government,  ready  to  take  power  into  its  hands, 
and  furnish  wise  rulers  to  the  state  when  the  aris- 
tocracy had  been  overthrown.  The  peasantry  and 
the  populace  of  their  towns  were  brutalized  to  the 
last  degree  by  ignorance  and  oppression.  The 
court  and  the  aristocracy  were  too  utterly  corrupt 
and  effete  to  show  any  moral  courage  or  attempt 
to  control  the  crisis  which  they  had  themselves, 
by  dallying  with  Liberalism  and  Scepticism,  help- 
ed to  bring  on ;  they  threw  the  reins  on  the  neck 
of  a  frenzied  people,  and  betook  themselves,  for  the 
most  part,  to  ignominious  flight.  In  the  whole 
nation,  though  there  were  generous  aspirations, 
there  was  no  faith.  The  state  superstition  had 
been  renounced  by  all  men  in  their  hearts,  even 
by  its  state  supporters,  even  by  its  own  priests : 
but  its  political  ascendancy  had  been  the  upas 
shade  which  had  forbidden  any  other  religion  to 
grow.  The  creed  of  Rousseau  was  not  a  faith  but 
an  emotion,  capable  of  impelling,  not  of  control- 
ling or  sustaining  men.  Here,  as  Quinet  in  his  re- 
cent work  has  pointed  out,  lay  the  root  of  the 
whole  failure.  Institutions,  antiquated  and  decay- 


Pitt.  215 

ed,  may  fall  or  be  pulled  down ;  but  humanity  can 
advance  into  a  new  order  of  things  only  when  it 
is  borne  forward  on  the  wings  of  a  new  faith. 
And  not  a  step  will  be  made  toward  the  attain- 
ment of  a  new  faith  by  guillotining  all  the  tyrants 
and  oligarchs  in  the  world. 

First  there  was  a  revolutionary  movement  in 
which  the  generous  hopes  and  glorious  promises 
which  fascinated  the  youth  of  Wordsworth,  South- 
ey,  and  Coleridge  were  blended  with  the  premon- 
itory symptoms  of  the  crimes  and  horrors  to  come, 
and  accompanied  by  an  explosion  of  chimeras,  of 
rhetoric,  of  theatrical  egotism,  and  of  political 
folly,  the  fearful  significance  of  which  is  plain  to 
the  retrospective  eye  of  history.  Then  ensued 
Anarchy  and  the  Reign  of  Terror,  which  has  left 
so  deep  and  almost  ineffaceable  a  stain  on  the 
cause  of  Progress,  and  from  the  effects  of  which 
that  cause  has  suffered  ever  since,  and  is  suffering 
to  this  hour.  After  Anarchy  and  the  Terror  came 
a  military  despotism  which,  by  its  piratical  tyran- 
ny over  Europe,  put  the  hearts  of  all  nations  on 
the  side  of  the  national  despots,  who  presented 
themselves  as  the  only  saviors  from  the  rule  of  a 
foreign  conqueror  and  the  insolent  myrmidons  of 
his  oppression.  Not  only  George  III.  and  his 
Tory  ministers,  not  only  the  half-Liberal  monarchy 
of  Prussia,  but  an  Emperor  of  Austria,  a  Bourbon 


216  Three  English  Statesmen. 

King  of  Spain,  became  in  the  eyes  of  their  tram- 
pled subjects  liberators  and  friends  of  freedom. 
We  are  all  glad  that  the  Treaty  of  Vienna  has 
been  torn  up ;  but  it  ought  to  be  borne  in  mind 
that  it  was  in  its  origin,  partly  indeed  a  counter- 
revolutionary arrangement  of  the  despots,  but 
partly  also  a  military  arrangement,  framed,  not 
without  necessity,  to  secure  Europe  against  the 
cruel  rapacity  of  France.  The  conquests  of  Na- 
poleon may  have  hastened  the  fall  of  feudalism, 
which  in  any  case  was  inevitable ;  but  what  was 
this  compared  with  the  mischief  done  by  the  de- 
struction of  human  life  and  of  the  fruits  of  human 
labor  by  the  reaction  created  in  favor  of  the  old 
dynasties  and  institutions,  by  the  evil  passions 
everywhere  aroused,  above  all  by  the  permanent 
impulse  given  to  the  great  curse  of  this  genera- 
tion, the  system  of  standing  armies,  and  generally 
to  the  war  spirit  among  nations  ?  The  Code  Na- 
poleon is  vaunted  as  though  it  had  sprung  from 
the  conqueror's  brain,  and  been  propagated  by  his 
arms ;  but  in  fact  it  is  merely  the  embodiment 
of  the  more  enlightened  and  humane  theories  of 

O 

jurisprudence  which  had  been  gaining  ground 
throughout  the  eighteenth  century,  and  had  been 
to  a  great  extent  carried  into  effect  by  paternal 
despots,  such  as  Leopold  of  Tuscany  and  Freder- 
ic the  Great  And  against  the  Code  Napoleon 


Pitt.  217 

we  have  to  set  the  revival  for  the  evil  purposes  of 
despotism  of  the  state  religion  and  the  state  priest- 
hood of  France. 

To  the  Napoleonic  despotism  France,  after  a 
brief  interlude  of  uncongenial  freedom,  has  re- 
turned ;  and  this  despotism  is  the  keystone  of  the 
system  of  standing  armies  and  government  by 
force  in  Europe.  Like  Slavery,  it  is  inherently 
propagandist ;  and  it  has  infected  the  govern- 
ing class,  even  in  this  country,  with  a  tendency 
to  violence  and  martial  law.  Better  than  the 
Bourbon  despotism  it  may  be,  inasmuch  as  it 
openly  embraces  social  equality  and  religious 
toleration,  though  it  covertly  undermines  the 
first  by  the  creation  of  a  military  aristocracy,  and 
the  second  by  its  alliance  with  an  obscurantist 
and  Jesuitical  priesthood.  But  if  any  one  is  in- 
clined to  take  Bonapartism  at  its  own  estimate, 
and  to  concur  in  calling  a  Bonaparte  a  Messiah, 
let  him  first  consider  the  progress  which  had  been 
made  under  the  forms  of  the  old  institutions  by 
Frederic  the  Great,  Joseph  the  Second,  and  Will- 
iam Pitt. 

I  do  not  wish  to  excuse,  much  less  to  justify, 
the  despots  of  the  Coalition.  By  their  conspira- 
cy, by  their  invasion  of  France,  by  the  outrageous 
threats  which,  through  the  proclamation  of  the 
Duke  of  Brunswick,  they  uttered  against  the 


218  Three  English  Statesmen. 

independence  of  the  French  people,  they  commit- 
ted at  once  a  great  blunder  and  a  great  crime, 
and  they  reaped  the  bitter  fruits  of  their  offense. 
Wisdom,  by  the  lips  of  old  Kaunitz,  had  warned 
them  of  their  proper  course — to  draw  a  cordon 
round  the  eruption  and  let  the  volcano  consume 
its  own  entrails,  as  it  assuredly  would  have  done. 
They  chose,  instead  of  this,  to  tap  the  crater,  and 
bring  the  lava-torrent  down  upon  themselves. 
Their  attack  at  once  threw  the  Revolution  into 
the  hands  of  the  violent  party,  and  was  the  proxi- 
mate cause  of  the  massacres  of  September  and  of 
the  Reign  of  Terror.  It  made  the  Revolution 
military.  The  creed  of  the  Voltairians  was  a 
creed  of  peace.  Voltaire  is  never  so  good  as 
when  he  is  ridiculing  the  cruel  folly  which  crimps 
a  number  of  ignorant  and  innocent  peasants, 
dresses  them  up  in  uniform,  teaches  them  to 
march  and  wheel,  and  sends  them  off  to  kill  and 
be  killed  by  another  army  of  peasants,  ignorant 
and  innocent  like  themselves,  as  a  sacrifice  to 
what  is  called  the  honor  of  kings.  The  teachings 
of  Rousseau  were,  if  possible,  more  pacific  than 
those  of  Voltaire.  Robespierre  by  conviction 
and  interest  was  averse  to  war.  And  if  the  Gi- 
rondins  in  their  egotism  were  ready,  against  their 
principles,  to  invoke  a  war  for  the  objects  of  their 
ambition,  the  army  of  the  monarchy  having  been 


Pitt.  219 


utterly  broken  up,  France  was  without  an 
till  the  advance  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  gave 
her  an  army  of  despair.  But  we  must  weigh  the 
misdeeds  even  of  the  Coalition  of  Pilnitz  in  a  just 
balance.  The  trade  of  these  men  was  to  be  kings  : 
the  world,  time  out  of  mind,  had  sanctioned  that 
trade  :  in  many  of  the  nations  over  which  they 
ruled,  and  which  were  too  backward  for  free  in- 
stitutions, the  trade  was  necessary  still.  But  the 
French  Revolution  proclaimed  itself  universal, 
and  threatened  all  the  thrones  and  altars  of  the 
world  with  change.  It  has  been  much  praised 
for  having  done  so,  as  though  it  had  soared  be- 
yond the  narrow  bounds  of  national  self-interest 
which  limited  the  vision  of  revolutionists  in  other 
nations.  Such  proclamations  cost  no  self-sacri- 
fice ;  they  may  spring  from  vanity  and  folly  as 
well  as  from  breadth  of  sympathy  and  catholicity 
of  view  ;  their  value  must  be  estimated  by  the 
acts  which  follow  ;  and  the  acts  of  the  proclaimers 
of  universal  brotherhood,  in  this  instance,  toward 
foreign  nations,  as  well  as  toward  each  other,  were 
unhappily  the  acts  of  brothers  Cain.  Those  who 
were  the  first  to  welcome  them  with  open  arms 
were  the  first  to  feel  their  rapacity  and  insolence. 
But,  at  all  events,  the  announcement  of  universal 
revolution  could  not  fail  to  arouse  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation  in  established  governments,  and 


220  Three  English  Statesmen. 

such  a  combination  as  the  Coalition  of  Pilnitz 
was  morally  certain  to  result.  Neither  the 
English  Eevolution  of  the  seventeenth  century 
nor  the  American  Revolution  proclaimed  itself 
universal ;  both  of  them  entered  at  once  into 
friendly  relations  with  other  governments  of 
whatever  form ;  yet  these  revolutions  did  more 
in  the  end  than  the  French  Revolution  for  the 
liberties  of  mankind. 

We  may  be  thankful,  at  all  events,  that  the 
fortunes  of  humanity,  in  this  its  critical  transition 
from  feudalism  to  the  era  of  equality  and  justice, 
are  now  partly  placed  in  other  hands;  and  that 
from  the  extinct  volcano  of  Jacobinism  we  may 
turn  to  a  United  Italy  and  a  United  Germany, 
unsullied  by  terrorism  and  full  of  hope. 

There  can  be  no  sadder  proof  of  the  bad  effects 
of  the  French  Revolution  on  the  general  interest 
of  Progress  than  the  conversion  of  Pitt  to  the 
side  of  the  Reaction.  He  was  as  far  as  possible 
from  wishing  to  attack  the  revolution.  Probably 
he  sympathized  with  it  while  it  kept  terms  with 
reason  and  humanity.  He  had  entered  into  the 
most  friendly  relations  with  the  American  Re- 
public, notwithstanding  the  influence  of  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution  on  Ireland.  In  1792,  when  vio- 
lence had  already  begun  in  France,  he  reduced 
his  army, 'struck  off  two  thousand  seamen,  and 


Pitt.  221 

held  out  the  highest  hopes  of  farther  relief  from 
taxes  within  the  next  fifteen  years.  "  For  al- 
though," said  he,  in  his  budget-speech,  "  we  must 
not  count  with  certainty  on  the  continuance  of 
our  present  prosperity  during  such  an  interval, 
yet  unquestionably  there  never  was  a  time  in  the 
history  of  this  country  when,  from  the  situation 
of  Europe,  we  might  more  reasonably  expect  fif- 
teen years  of  peace  than  we  may  at  the  present 
moment."  He  looked  forward  to  the  abolition  of 
customs'  duties,  which  would  have  been  at  the 
same  time  the  inauguration  of  free  trade.  All 
his  plans  and  hopes  were  bound  up  with  peace. 
He  stood  aloof  from  the  Congress  of  Pilnitz. 
Had  his  action  been  free,  he  would  probably  have 
stood  aloof  to  the  end. 

The  fears  and  passions  of  the  court,  the  aristoc- 
racy, and  the  clergy,  had,  however,  been  aroused ; 
the  progress  of  the  revolution  daily  increased  the 
excitement  among  these  classes,  and  it  was  raised 
to  the  highest  pitch  by  the  declamations  of  Burke. 
As  an  economical  and  Indian  reformer,  Burke,  in 
the  earlier  part  of  his  career,  had  been  one  of  the 
best  organs  of  the  movement,  into  the  reaction 
against  which  he  now  flung  himself  headlong.  If 
the  greatness  of  offenses  were  to  be  measured,  not 
by  the  badness  of  the  intention,  but  by  the  bad- 
ness of  the  effect,  few  greater  offenses  would  ever 


222  Three  English  Statesmen. 

have  been  committed  than  the  publication  of  the 
"  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution."  It  was 
the  special  duty  of  a  political  philosopher  at  that 
moment  to  allay  passion,  to  bring  the  nation  un- 
der the  dominion  of  its  reason,  and  to  enable  it  to 
meet  calmly  and  wisely  the  tremendous  crisis 
through  which  Europe  was  evidently  about  to 
pass.  Mr.  Buckle  thinks  that  Burke,  who  up  to 
this  time  had  been  the  first  of  statesmen,  now 
suddenly  went  mad.  But  the  truth  is,  that  two 
of  his  best  treatises,  the  "  Letter  to  Sir  Hercules 
Langrishe"  and  the  "  Thoughts  on  Scarcity,"  were 
written  after  the  "Reflections  on  the  French  Rev- 
olution." In  a  certain  sense  he  had  always  been 
mad;  his  reason  had  always  been  liable  to  be 
overpowered  by  his  imagination ;  he  had  always 
in  his  moments  of  passion  been  incapable  of  self- 
control  ;  he  had  always  had  in  him  that  which  is 
commonly  the  root  of  madness,  for  he  was  a  great 
egotist,  and  his  egotism  is  always  breaking  out 
under  the  thin  disguise  of  an  affected  self-depreci- 
ation. He  had  lost  the  ear  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons as  much  by  his  extravagance  and  rant  as 
by  his  prolixity ;  he  had  come  to  be  regarded  not 
only  as  a  dinner-bell  but  as  a  fool ;  and  if  we  are 
scandalized  at  the  exclusion  of  this  man  of  genius 
from  the  cabinet,  people  in  1789  would  have  been 
more  scandalized  at  his  admission.  "  Folly  per- 


Pitt.  223 

sonified,"  lie  was  called  by  one  who  had  just  been 
hearing  his  speech  on  the  Regency  Bill ;  and  the 
same  witness  says  that  he  finished  his  wild  speech 
in  a  manner  next  to  madness.  When  the  house 
would  not  listen  to  his  ravings,  he  called  them  a 
pack  of  hounds.  He  described  the  lord  chancel- 
lor as  a  man  with  black  brows  and  a  large  wig, 
and  said  he  was  fit  to  do  an  act  worse  than  high- 
way robbery.  He  spoke  in  offensive  language 
even  of  the  afflicted  king.  He  called  upon  the 
clerk  to  read  the  Great  Charter  because  a  bill  for 
the  reduction  of  offices  trenched  on  some  vested 
interests.  He  took  a  dagger  out  of  his  pocket, 
and  hurled  it  on  the  floor  of  the  House,  as  a  sym- 
bol of  the  atrocity  of  the  French  Revolution ; 
upon  which  Sheridan  remarked  that  he  had 
brought  the  knife,  but  he  had  forgotten  to  bring 
the  fork.  He  deserves  the  national  gratitude  for 
having  summoned  Hastings  before  the  bar  of  jus- 
tice ;  but  the  violence  of  his  sallies  in  the  course 
of  the  trial  gave  a  great  advantage  to  the  accused. 
Though  he  was  by  principle  a  free  trader,  his  par- 
ty passions  had  led  him  to  oppose  Pitt's  measure 
for  free  trade  with  Ireland.  He  was  now  dis- 
credited, somewhat  neglected  by  his  friends,  rest- 
less from  mortified  self-love,  and  ready  for  an  out- 
break. Mad  in  any  other  sense  he  was  not. 
No  doubt  in  the  "  Reflections"  he  is  sincere. 


224  Three  English  Statesmen. 

He  was  a  worshiper  of  constitutional  monarchy. 
It  was  his  Fetish.  He  loved  and  adored  it  with 
the  passionate  loyalty  which,  as  an  Irishman  in 
his  own  country,  he  would  have  felt  toward  the 
chief  of  his  clan.  Politics  were  his  religion,  to 
which,  in  his  mind,  any  other  religion  was  sub- 
servient, as  he  showed  when,  for  political  pur- 
poses, he  supported  the  imposition  of  the  Thirty- 
Nine  Articles  on  the  reluctant  consciences  of 
clergymen  who  had  petitioned  for  relief.  His 
philosophy  afforded  no  firm  and  lofty  ground  of 
immutable  faith  in  things  unseen,  from  which  he 
could  form  a  rational  estimate  of  political  sys- 
tems, as  things  merely  subservient  to  the  higher 
life  of  man,  venerable  only  for  their  utility,  not  to 
be  altered  without  good  reason,  but  when  there 
was  good  reason,  to  be  altered  or  abolished  with- 
out superstitious  scruple,  and  destined  like  all 
other  parts  of  the  outward  vesture  of  humanity 
to  pass  away  before  the  end.  He  did  not  know 
that,  while  many  things  that  are  of  man  are  good, 
nothing  is  sacred  but  that  which  is  of  God.  He 
was  not  so  much  an  advocate  as  a  priest  of  the 
constitution  and  its  mythical  founders ;  he  preach- 
ed sermons  on  it  as  fervent  as  those  of  Bossuet, 
and  defended  its  absurdities  by  arguments  which 
his  piety  suggested  as  strange  as  ever  a  Roman 
friar  used  in  defense  of  his  superstitions.  Ac- 


Pitt.  225 

cording  to  him  it  was  ordered  by  a  sort  of  divine 
wisdom  that  Cornwall  should  have  as  many  mem- 
bers as  Scotland,  because  the  representation  was 
thus  prevented  from  being  too  closely  connected 
with  local  interests.  When  the  French  Revolu- 
tion got  beyond  his  consecrated  type,  it  forfeited 
his  sympathies,  and  with  a  nature  so  passionate 
as  his,  to  forfeit  sympathy  was  to  incur  hatred. 

I  do  not  complain  of  his  strictures  on  the  folly 
and  incompetence  of  the  French  Revolutionists. 
Here  he  could  scarcely  go  beyond  the  truth. 
But  I  complain  of  his  blindness,  which  charity, 
making  the  utmost  allowance  for  the  frenzy  of 
rhetoric,  can  scarcely  pronounce  altogether  invol- 
untary, to  the  evils  of  the  French  monarchy  and 
church — I  should  rather  say  his  raving  panegyrics 
on  things  shocking  to  sense  and  virtue.  "  Ideas 
furnished  from  the  wardrobe  of  a  moral  imagina- 
tion"— "  decent  drapery  of  life" — "  vice  losing  half 
its  evil  by  losing  all  its  grossness" — is  it  possible 
that  he  can  sincerely  have  applied  snch  terms  to 
the  system  of  Louis  XV.,  of  the  Regent  Orleans, 
of  Cardinal  Dubois  ?  Knowing,  as  he  must  have 
done,  the  character  of  the  French  aristocracy,  can 
he  in  perfect  good  faith  have  uttered  in  relation 
to  them  the  blasphemous  extravagance  that  there 
were  two  sources  of  all  good  in  Europe,  the  spir- 
it of  religion  and  the  spirit  of  a  gentleman? 

K2 


226  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Knowing,  as  lie  must  have  done,  the  condition  of 
the  French  people,  and  the  responsibility  of  the 
court  for  their  misery,  can  he  have  failed  to  be 
aware  of  the  sophism  of  which  he  was  guilty  in 
presenting  that  court  under  the  image  of  the 
dauphiness  as  a  star  rising  full  of  beauty  and 
beneficence  over  the  horizon  of  Versailles  ?  That 
this  beautiful  and  beneficent  monarchy  was  bank- 
rupt is  a  fact  of  which  its  devotee  just  shows  him- 
self conscious,  and  the  remedy  suggested  by  the 
great  public  moralist  is  in  effect  robbery  of  the 
public  creditor,  which  he  thinks  preferable  to  any 
appropriation  of  the  property  of  the  State  Church. 
He  defends  the  ecclesiastical  sinecurism  so  enor- 
mous in  France,  on  the  ground  that  ecclesiastics 
make  as  good  a  use  of  property  as  laymen;  an  argu- 
ment which  would  prove  that  there  can  scarcely 
be  too  much  corruption  in  the  Church.  His  po- 
litical philosophy  does  not  enable  him,  in  his  anti- 
revolutionary  transports,  to  distinguish  between 
the  character  of  feudalism  in  its  own  day  and  its 
character  when  its  day  was  past,  or  between  the 
situation  and  the  difficulties  of  the  English  nation 
in  1688  and  those  of  the  French  people  in  1789. 
In  this  vituperation  of  the  National  Assembly 
and  the  movement  party  in  France,  if  he  is  some- 
times telling,  he  sometimes  sinks  to  the  level  of  a 
scold.  His  declamations  against  declaimers,  his 


Pitt.  227 

sophistical  attacks  upon  sophisters,  the  contempt 
which  he  the  economical  reformer  affects  for  econ- 
omists and  calculators,  would  move  a  smile  if 
we  did  not  know  how  terrible  their  effect  had 
been.  He  talks  unctuously  of  religion,  and  lash- 
es himself  and  his  readers  into  fury  against 
French  Atheism.  Soon  we  find  him  at  the  feet 
of  Catherine  of  Eussia,  a  Voltairian  in  creed,  and 
more  than  a  Voltairian  in  practice,  conjuring  her, 
with  fulsome  flattery,  to  lend  the  aid  of  her  un- 
scrupulous arms  in  crushing  the  objects  of  his 
political  aversion.  Burke  broke  with  his  old 
party:  he  won  the  affection,  almost  the  worship, 
of  a  new  party,  the  fierce  applause  of  a  new  audi- 
ence. He  received  a  pension,  and  the  promise  of 
a  peerage,  from  the  court  and  the  Tory  Govern- 
ment. His  eminence  entitled  him  to  a  pension  if 
any  body  was  to  be  pensioned,  and  to  a  peerage 
if  he,  a  peer  of  intellect,  cared  to  be  a  lord.  But 
that  he  should  accept  these  rewards  of  his  change 
of  party  was  another  proof  of  the  truth  of  his 
own  statement — that  the  age  of  chivalry  was 
gone. 

Of  course  the  clergy  were  deeply  moved,  and 
the  drum  ecclesiastic  beat  to  arms.  Horsley,  the 
leading  political  bishop  of  the  day,  and  a  sort  of 
ecclesiastical  henchman  of  Pitt,  is  known  as  the 
author  of  the  maxim  "that  the  people  have  no- 


228  Three  English  Statesmen. 

tiling  to  do  with  the  laws  "but  to  obey  them." 
This  prelate  preached  a  sermon,  published  in  his 
works,  in  which,  correcting  the  imperfect  views  of 
the  Founder  of  Christianity,  he  lays  it  down  that 
a  conscientious  submission  to  the  sovereign  power 
is,  no  less  than  brotherly  love,  a  distinctive  badge 
of  Christ's  disciples — in  other  words,  that  the  dis- 
tinctive badge  of  Christians  is  to  love  one  another 
and  be  Tories.  He  thanks  God  that  in  the 
Church  of  England  both  these  marks  of  genuine 
Christianity  have  ever  been  conspicuous.  He 
then  proceeds  to  say  "that  in  the  exercise  of 
brotherly  love,  it  is  perhaps  the  amiable  infirmity 
of  Englishmen  to  be  too  easy  in  admitting  the 
claim  of  a  spiritual  kindred — that  the  times  com- 
pel him  to  remark  that  brotherly  love  embraces 
only  brethren — that  the  term  of  holy  brother- 
hood is  profaned  by  an  indiscriminate  application 
— that  if  persons  living  under  the  British  consti- 
tution have  dared  to  exult  in  the  proceedings  of 
the  French  revolutionists,  with  them  it  is  meet 
that  we  abjure  all  brotherhood :  a  claim  on  our 
charity  these  miserable  men  may  have,  they  have 
none  on  our  brotherly  affection."  If  this  was 
preached  by  a  man  of  sense  and  learning  in  a  re- 
sponsible position  and  before  an  intelligent  audi- 
ence, we  may  imagine  what  was  preached  from  the 
rural  pulpit  before  the  squire.  It  is  to  be  borne 


Pitt.  229 

in  mind,  however,  that  if  the  State  bishops  and 
clergy,  who  supposed  their  wealth  and  their  priv- 
ileges to  be  in  danger,  inveighed  against  the  impi- 
ety of  revolution,  so  did  Robert  Hall,  fascinated  as 
he  had  been  at  first  by  its  political  promises  and 
hopes.  The  French  atheists  shocked  all  decency, 
as  well  as  all  religion. 

It  must  be  added  that  Fox  behaved  unwisely. 
His  generous  heart  was  on  the  side  of  liberty :  but 
there  was  too  much  in  him  of  the  Palais  Royal, 
too  much  of  the  former  member  of  the  gambling 
club  at  Almack's,  where  people  played  for  des- 
perate stakes,  with  masks  to  conceal  their  emo- 
tions and  a  wild  masquerading  dress  to  typify 
their  delirious  excitement.  The  political  arena 
was  to  him  still  a  gambling-table  :  and  his  strong 
point  was  not  self-control.  He  ought,  in  the  inter- 
est of  his  cause,  to  have  repressed  the  ardor  of  his 
sympathies,  to  have  blamed  the  excesses  while  he 
showed  the  benefits  of  the  Revolution,  to  have 
pointed  out  how  inevitable  it  was  in  France,  how 
different  was  the  case  of  the  English  from  that  of 
the  French  monarchy,  how  small  was  the  danger  in 
England  of  French  contagion ;  and  then  to  have 
insisted  that  for  whatever  danger  there  might  be, 
the  right  antidote  was  not  war  or  violent  repres- 
sion, but  timely  measures  of  reform.  He  would 
thus  have  strengthened  the  hands  of  Pitt,  whom 


230  Three  English  Statesmen. 

he  must  have  known  to  be  moderate,  in  resisting 
the  war  tendencies  of  his  party  and  of  the  court. 
Instead  of  this  he  held  the  language  of  a  Jacobin, 
and  at  once  inflamed  the  panic  and  wounded  the 
national  pride  by  talking  of  the  Revolution  as  the 
most  glorious  event  since  Saratoga  and  Yorktown. 
His  hot-headed  followers,  of  course,  went  beyond 
their  chief.  But  he  was  the  leader  of  the  Oppo- 
sition, and  the  function  of  a  leader  of  Opposition 
is,  at  all  costs  and  hazards,  to  assail  and  to  em- 
barrass the  government.  While  this  system  of 
party  government  lasts  it  must  be  so.  But  we 
will  hope  that  party  government  is  not  to  be  the 
end  of  all  things;  and  that  in  the  course  of  our 
political  changes  we  shall  find  a  way  of  establish- 
ing a  government  to  which  we  may  all  feel  loyal, 
and  which  we  may  all  desire  to  support  as  the 
government,  not  of  a  party,  but  of  the  nation. 

For  one  of  his  speeches  Fox  has  been  rather 
unreasonably  blamed.  Speaking  of  the  refusal  of 
the  French  guards  to  act  against  the  people,  he 
said  that  the  example  of  a  neighboring  nation  had 
proved  the  fear  of  standing  armies  to  be  unfound- 
ed, since  it  was  now  shown  that  by  becoming  a 
soldier,  a  man  did  not  cease  to  be  a  citizen.  This, 
at  the  time,  brought  on  a  storm  of  denunciation, 
which  still  rebellows  in  the  histories.  "  All  the 
objections,"  says  Mr.  Massey,  "that  have  been 


Pitt. »  231 

urged  by  theoretical  writers  and  popular  orators 
against  permament  military  establishments,  sink 
into  insignificance  when  compared  with  the  ap- 
palling magnitude  of  the  danger  attendant  on  an 
armed  force  which  is  to  arbitrate  in  disputes  or 
conflicts  between  the  people  and  their  rulers."  Mr. 
Massey  fails  to  see  that,  as  it  is,  the  armed  force  in 
the  hands  of  the  rulers  all  over  Europe  arbitrates 
in  the  disputes  and  conflicts  between  the  rulers 
and  the  people.  Standing  armies  are  the  bane  of 
the  world,  and  to  make  them  a  perfect  curse  it  is 
only  necessary  to  extinguish  in  the  soldier  the  last 
spark  of  the  citizen  and  the  man.  Soldiers,  while 
they  are  soldiers,  must  submit  to  a  rigid  discipline, 
and  move  at  the  word  of  command :  it  is  the  con- 
dition of  their  calling  and  the  dictate  of  their  hon- 
or. But  I  claim  for  the  soldier,  whether  officer  or 
private,  the  rights  of  labor  and  of  man.  I  claim 
for  him,  in  the  first  place,  the  right  to  dispose,  like 
other  men,  of  his  own  industry ;  to  make  the  best 
terms  he  can  for  himself,  like  other  men,  in  the 
labor  market,  and  to  give  his  employer  warning — 
such  warning,  of  course,  as  the  nature  of  the  calling 
may  reasonably  require — if  fair  terms  are  not  allow- 
ed. In  this  way  our  army  might  be  smaller,  but  it 
would  be  better  than  it  is  now.  In  the  second 
place,  I  claim  for  the  soldier  the  right  to  retire, 
and  to  deliver  up  his  arms,  though  by  no  means 


232  Three  English  Statesmen. 

to  use  them  against  his  employer,  when  he  finds 
that  his  military  duties  are  likely  to  come  into 
conflict  with  his  duties  as  a  citizen.  There  will 
be  no  fear  of  his  exercising  this  right,  unless  the 
heart  of  the  nation  is  really  against  the  govern- 
ment, and  when  the  heart  of  the  nation  is  really 
against  the  government,  the  government  ought 
not,  if  politics  are  a  matter  of  reason  and  justice, 
to  have  the  means  of  putting  down  the  nation  by 
brute  force.  The  habit  of  treating  the  soldier  for 
a  long  term  of  years  as  the  bondman  of  the  gov- 
ernment and  the  blind  instrument  of  its  will,  is  a 
relic  of  barbarism,  against  which  advancing  civili- 
zation will  in  the  end  protest. 

Pressed  by  his  own  party,  not  supported  in 
Ms  resistance  by  the  Opposition,  Pitt,  though  the 
spirit  of  Adam  Smith  struggled  hard  and  long 
in  him,  began  to  slide  toward  war.  He  first 
showed  his  tendency  by  a  royal  proclamation 
against .  seditious  writings,  and  by  measures  of 
half  hostility  toward  France — an  Alien  Bill 
pointed  against  French  emissaries,  an  act  prohib- 
iting the  circulation  of  assignats,  and  another 
prohibiting  the  exportation  of  corn  and  flour  to 
France.  At  last  he  himself  caught,  or  affected  to 
catch,  the  panic,  and  held  wild  language  about 
his  head  being  in  danger.  The  French  Republic- 
ans meanwhile,  by  their  aggressive  violence  and 


Pitt.  233 

their  frantic  language,  were  giving  every  possible 
handle  to  their  enemies.  To  treat  their  wild 
propagandism,  their  decrees  of  universal  revolu- 
tion, as  the  ravings  of  madmen,  whose  paroxysm 
would  soon  be  over,  and  who  would  too  surely 
avenge  their  outrages  on  themselves,  was  the 
course  pointed  out  by  wisdom :  but  it  was  not  an 
easy  course  for  Pitt  to  take.  The  execution  of 
the  king — a  proceeding  as  disgusting  in  its  theat- 
rical levity,  as  it  was  shocking  in  its  cruelty — 
gave  a  death-blow  to  the  hope  of  peace.  The 
French  ambassador  was  ordered  to  leave  the 
kingdom,  and  there  was  war.  My  belief  is  that 
Pitt  felt  he  was  doing  wrong :  but  though  a  pat- 
riot and  a  man  of  honor,  he  had  not  a  god  in  his 
breast.  He  could  not  resign  power  and  break 
with  all  his  friends.  Reasoning  like  a  financier, 
and  seeing  the  depreciation  of  the  French  assig- 
nats,  he  thought  that  it  would  be  a  short  war. 
When  he  found  himself  deceived  in  this,  he  made 
earnest,  even  humiliating  efforts,  to  negotiate,  to 
buy,  a  peace. 

And  what  was  the  cause  of  this  war  which  sus- 
pended all  political  and  social  progress  for  thirty 
years,  or  rather  threw  it  back  to  a  point  which  it 
had  reached  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
under  the  fiscal  burdens  of  which,  and  its  perhaps 
still  heavier  burdens  of  other  kinds,  we  still 


234  Three  English  Statesmen. 

groan?  Established  morality  permits  statesmen 
to  resort  to  arms  without  having  first  tried  ar- 
bitration, and  this  in  cases  where  their  personal 
prejudices  or  rivalries  may  be  the  real  obstacles 
to  a  pacific  settlement.  But  they  are  bound  to 
assign  a  definite  ground  of  war,  without  which 
there  can  be  no  assignable  terms  of  peace.  In 
the  case  before  us  no  definite  ground  of  war  has 
been  assigned  down  to  the  present  day.  From 
the  various  authorities  on  the  subject,  you  would 
gather  that  England  took  up  arms  to  put  down 
the  Jacobins,  to  save  herself  from  the  contagion 
of  revolutionary  principles,  to  punish  regicide,  to 
check  the  territorial  aggrandizement  of  France,  to 
establish  the  existence  of  the  Supreme  Being,  and 
to  close  the  navigation  of  the  Scheldt. 

To  have  gone  to  war  for  the  purpose  of  closing 
the  Scheldt  would  have  been  the  act  of  a  greater 
maniac  than  the  Jacobins.  It  would  have  been 
like  fighting  about  a  right  of  way  in  the  middle 
of  an  earthquake.  But  the  truth  was  that  we 
were  concerned  in  the  matter  only  as  guarantors, 
and  the  Dutch  did  not  call  upon  us  to  perform 
our  guarantee. 

As  Burke  wrote  against  a  Regicide  peace,  he 
must  have  looked  upon  the  execution  of  the  king 
as  the  ground  of  the  war.  The  murder  of  the 
French  king  was  an  offense  against  Heaven,  and 


Pitt.  235 

Heaven  would  certainly  have  visited  it,  and  did 
visit  it,  though  not  by  the  thunderbolt,  by  a  sure 
moral  retribution,  as  well  as  the  still  more  das- 
tardly and  atrocious  murder  of  the  queen,  upon 
the  savages  by  whom  it  was  committed.  But  it 
was  no  offense  against  us.  It  was  in  fact  commit- 
ted partly  in  imitation  of  our  execution  of  Charles 
I.  And  if  the  murder  of  the  king  was  the  cause 
of  the  war,  what  was  to  be  its  object  ?  To  bring 
the  king  to  life  again  ?  Or  to  punish  his  murder- 
ers? Or  to  punish  the  whole  French  nation? 
If  there  was  to  be  no  Regicide  peace,  how  was  a 
war  with  Regicides  to  be  brought  to  an  end  ? 

The  vindication  of  public  right  is  another 
ground  assigned  for  the  war.  The  conduct  of 
the  French  Republicans  to  the  countries  which 
they  overran  was  infamous.  But  they  had  vio- 
lated no  public  right  which  we  were  concerned 
to  defend.  The  allied  kings  had  attacked  them ; 
they  had  beaten  the  allied  kings,  taken  the  offen- 
sive, and  commenced  a  career  of  conquest  in  their 
turn.  This  was  the  fortune  of  war.  And  these 
allies  of  ours  in  the  cause  of  public  right,  what 
sort  of  champions  of  that  cause  were  they  ?  Aus- 
tria, Prussia,  and  Russia  had  just  consummated 
the  partition  of  Poland,  the  most  flagrant  viola- 
tion of  public  right  in  history,  and  one  against 
which,  let  them  roll  as  many  stones  to  the  mouth 


236  Three  English  Statesmen. 

of  that  sepulchre  as  they  will,  nature  and  justice 
will  protest  till  right  is  done.  Not  only  so,  but 
when  we  had  become  their  confederates,  Austria 
and  Prussia  took  possession  by  robbers'  law  of 
Conde  and  Valenciennes,  in  spite  of  the  protest 
of  the  Bourbons,  for  whom,  as  legitimate  sover- 
eigns of  France,  the  allies  professed  to  fight ;  and 
when  Austria  afterward,  in  concert  with  Bona- 
parte, committed  an  act  of  brigandage  by  the 
seizure  of  Venice,  this  produced  in  us  no  moral 
repugnance  to  her  alliance.  The  conduct  of  En- 
gland was,  as  I  am  prepared  to  maintain,  more 
disinterested  on  the  whole,  as  well  as  marked  by 
greater  constancy  and  fortitude  than  that  of  any 
other  nation  engaged  on  either  side.  Her  liber- 
ties, imperfect  as  they  were,  breathed  into  her 
government  a  spirit  of  honor  which  was  not 
found  elsewhere,  and  checked  infamies  which  in 
the  secret  counsels  of  despotism  were  conceived 
without  shame  and  perpetrated  without  rebuke. 
But  even  England  from  the  beginning  made  it  a 
war  of  interest  as  well  as  of  alleged  principle; 
and  our  first  act  was  the  appropriation  of  the 
Island  of  Tobago. 

French  propagandism,  and  especially  the  pro- 
pagandist decree  of  the  19th  November,  1792,  is 
another  alleged  justification  of  the  war.  But 
this  was  merely  the  counterblast  to  the  propagan- 


Pitt.  237 

dism  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick.  If  it  was  law- 
ful for  the  allies  to  declare  themselves  the  protect- 
ors of  monarchy  in  France,  it  was  equally  lawful 
for  the  French  to  declare  themselves  the  protect- 
ors of  Republicanism  in  other  countries.  We 
ourselves  avowed,  though  with  faltering  accents, 
that  it  was  part  of  our  object  to  change  the  gov- 
ernment of  France.  The  decree  of  the  19th  No- 
vember, so  far  as  we  were  concerned,  was  empty 
fanfaronade ;  no  execution  could  be  had  of  it  in 
this  country  provided  our  government  behaved 
decently  to  our  people ;  it  might  have  been  treat- 
ed by  England  as  the  insult  of  a  lunatic,  which 
touches  no  man's  honor. 

Was  it  against  French  Atheism  that  we  went 
to  war  8  This  probably  was  the  leading  motive 
of  the  clergy.  It  can  not  have  been  the  motive 
of  Pitt.  He  at  least  must  have  had  sense  enough 
to  know  that  mankind  could  not  be  convinced  of 
the  existence  of  a  beneficient  Creator  by  filling 
creation  with  blood  and  havoc.  And  who  were 
the  representatives  of  religion  ?  An  emperor  of 
Austria,  who  shortened  his  life  by  self-indulgence; 
a  king  of  Prussia,  of  whom  it  was  said,  in  allusion 
to  his  emulation  of  Frederic  the  Great,  "  that  he 
had  nothing  of  Solomon  but  his  concubines ;"  the 
Semiramis  of  the  North ;  prince-bishops  of  the 
Rhine,  whose  petty  courts  we're  noted  as  the 


238  Three  English  Statesmen. 

sacred  scenes  of  every  pleasure.  Among  our- 
selves, the  Duke  of  York  with  his  Nancy  Par- 
sons; Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow,  who  died  with 
the  name  of  God  on  his  lips,  but  not  in  prayer; 
not  to  mention  the  minister  himself,  who  some- 
times saw  two  speakers  instead  of  one. 

The  great  Tory  authority,  Sir  Archibald  Ali- 
son, is  very  frank  and  explicit.  He  says  that 
what  the  government  had  in  view  was  not  the 
conquest  of  the  Republicans,  but  a  danger  nearer 
home :  that  they  dreaded  domestic  revolution  if 
pacific  intercourse  were  any  longer  carried  on 
with  France.  He  cites  a  remark  of  the  Empress 
Catherine  to  the  effect  that  war  is  sometimes  the 
only  way  of  giving  a  useful  direction  to  the  pas- 
sions, and  says  that  in  this  remark  is  to  be  found 
the  true  explanation  and  the  best  vindication  of 
the  French  war.  "  The  passions,"  he  proceeds, 
"  were  excited,  democratic  ambition  was  awaken- 
ed ;  the  desire  of  power,  under  the  name  of  reform, 
was  rapidly  gaining  ground  among  the  middle 
ranks,  and  the  institutions  of  the  country  were 
threatened  with  an  overthrow  as  violent  as  that 
which  had  recently  taken  place  in  the  French  Mon- 
archy. In  these  circumstances  the  only  mode  of 
checking  the  evil  was  by  engaging  in  a  foreign 
contest,  by  drawing  off  the  ardent  spirits  into  act- 
ive service,  and  in  lieu  of  the  modern  desire  for 


Pitt.  239 

innovation,  rousing  the  ancient  gallantry  of  the 
British  people."  Sir  Archibald  is  certainly  wrong 
as  to  the  fact.  The  institutions  of  the  country  were 
not  threatened  with  overthrow.  The  people  were 
loyal ;  they  had  shown  the  utmost  enthusiasm  on 
the  recovery  of  the  king's  health.  Burke  himself 
said  that  not  one  man  in  a  hundred  was  a  Revo- 
lutionist. Fox's  revolutionary  sentiments  met 
with  no  response,  but  with  general  reprobation, 
and  caused  even  his  friends  to  shrink  from  his 
side.  Of  the  so-called  Jacobin  Societies,  the  So- 
ciety for  Constitutional  Information  numbered 
only  a  few  hundred  members,  who,  though  they 
held  extreme  opinions,  were  headed  by  men  of 
character,  and  were  quite  incapable  of  treason  or 
violence.  The  Corresponding  Society  was  of  a 
more  sinister  character;  but  its  numbers  were 
computed  only  at  6000,  and  it  was  swallowed  up 
in  the  loyal  masses  of  the  people.  The  mob  at 
Birmingham  rose  for  Church  and  king,  and  sack- 
ed the  house  of  Priestley  because  he  was  an  Athe- 
ist, or,  what  was  the  same  thing,  a  man  of  science. 
A  Tory  mob  at  Manchester  treated  Mr.  Walker,  a 
respectable  Reformer  of  the  place,  in  a  similar 
manner.  "We  had  a  Parliament  of  rotten  bor- 
oughs, but  still  a  Parliament ;  a  law  framed  more 
in  the  interest  of  the  rich  than  of  the  poor,  but 
still  a  law;  a  free  press  ;  trial  by  jury  and  habeas 


240  Three  English  Statesmen. 

corpus,  no  letters  de  cachet,  no  Bastille.  The 
State  Church  was  unjustly  privileged,  but  not 
persecuting ;  and  the  Dissenters,  if  they  did  not 
love  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts,  had  no  desire 
to  worship  the  Goddess  of  Reason  in  the  form  of 
a  naked  prostitute  on  the  altar  of  St.  Paul's. 
The  religious  middle  classes  were  soon  repelled  by 
the  impieties  of  the  Revolution,  social  enthusiasts 
like  Coleridge  and  Southey  by  its  atrocities,  all 
men  of  sense  by  its  monkeyism  and  its  madness. 
Foreign  emissaries  can  do  nothing  except  where 
there  is  widespread  disaffection  among  the  people. 
The  army,  navy,  yeomanry,  and  militia  were  per- 
fectly sound.  Volunteers  in  large  numbers  an- 
swered the  call  of  the  government.  At  the  threat 
of  a  French  invasion  the  nation  would  have  risen 
as  it  had  risen  against  the  Armada.  In  Ireland 
alone  there  was  real  and  just  hatred  of  the  gov- 
ernment :  but  the  long  pressure  of  an  iron  tyran- 
ny had  crushed  Ireland  into  mute  despair :  and 
in  this  case,  as  in  all  cases,  Irish  disaffection  was 
rendered  dangerous  only  by  the  war  which 
brought  it  the  aid  of  foreign  arms.  The  govern- 
ment had  but  to  rule  well,  tread  steadily  in  the 
path  of  moderate  reform,  and  keep  the  defenses 
in  good  order.  England  would  then  have  passed 
unscathed  through  the  crisis,  and  the  wisdom 
of  her  rulers  would  have  ensured  the  gratitude 


Pitt.  241 

of  the  nation.  But  supposing  that  the  reverse 
had  been  the  case :  supposing  that  the  Tory  pan- 
ic had  been  as  well  founded  as  it  was  ground- 
less ; — does  the  morality  of  Sir  Archibald  Alison 
and  his  party  sanction  the  maxim  of  the  virtuous 
Catherine,  that  governments  are  at  liberty  to  di- 
vert troublesome  aspirations  into  the  channel  of  a 
foreign  war  ?  Is  there  any  thing  more  dangerous 
than  this  in  the  ravings  of  the  Jacobins  ?  Is 
there  any  thing  more  immoral  in  Machiavelli  ? 
The  principle,  no  doubt,  is  intended  for  the  ex- 
clusive use  of  such  governments  as  Tories  desire  to 
uphold.  But  its  application  can  not  be  arrested 
there.  If  the  Tories  had  a  right  to  divert  revo- 
lutionary sentiment  into  the  channel  of  war,  the 
Jacobins  had  a  right  to  divert  reactionary  senti- 
ment into  the  same  channel:  and  Napoleon  had 
the  same  right  to  get  rid  in  the  same  manner  of 
the  sentiments  which,  as  he  declared,  threatened 
the  stability  of  his  throne. 

The  same  remark  applies  to  the  excuse  found- 
ed on  the  danger  of  political  contagion.  Are  all 
governments  to  be  alike  licensed  to  make  war 
with  their  neighbors  for  the  purpose  of  political 
quarantine  ?  Is  the  privilege  to  be  extended  to 
republics  disquieted  by  the  neighborhood  of  mon- 
archies and  aristocracies,  as  well  as  to  monarchies 
and  aristocracies  disquieted  by  the  neighborhood 

L 


242  Three  English  Statesmen. 

of  republics  ?  Or  is  it  taken  for  granted  that  no 
free  commonwealth  can  be  so  ill-rooted  in  the  af- 
fection of  its  citizens,  or  so  wicked  as  to  make  nse 
of  such  a  power  ? 

It  is  sad  to  say  it,  but  when  Pitt  had  once  left 
the  path  of  right,  he  fell  headlong  into  evil.  To 
gratify  the  ignoble  fears  and  passions  of  his  party, 
he  commenced  a  series  of  attacks  on  English  lib- 
erty of  speaking  and  writing  which  Mr.  Massey, 
a  strong  anti-revolutionist,  characterizes  as  unpar- 
alleled since  the  time  of  Charles  I.  The  country 
was  filled  with  spies.  A  band  of  the  most  infam- 
ous informers  was  called  into  activity  by  the  gov- 
ernment. Men  were  prosecuted  for  loose  or 
drunken  words,  of  which  no  man  of  sense  would 
have  taken  notice,  and  for  speculative  opinions 
with  which  no  government  had  a  right  to  inter- 
fere. An  attorney,  named  Frost,  for  saying  in  a 
coffee-house,  where  he  could  not  have  intended  to 
conspire,  and  out  of  which  he  was,  in  fact,  kicked 
by  the  company,  that  he  was  for  equality  and  no 
king,  was  tried  before  Lord  Kenyon,  a  high  Tory 
judge,  and  sentenced  to  six  months'  imprisonment, 
to  stand  in  the  pillory,  to  find  security  for  good 
behavior,  and  to  be  struck  off  the  roll.  The  courts 
of  quarter  session,  with  their  benches  of  Tory 
squires,  were  employed  to  try  political  cases  by 
the  government,  to  which  their  character  as  tri- 


Pitt.  243 

bunals  must  have  been  too  well  known.  Associa- 
tions were  formed  under  government  patronage, 
for  the  detection  and  prosecution  of  sedition,  and 
thus  the  impartiality  of  the  jury  was  tainted  at 
its  source.  There  was  a  Tory  reign  of  terror,  to 
which  a  slight  increase  of  the  panic  among  the  up- 
per classes  would  probably  have  lent  a  redder  hue. 
Among  other  measures  of  repression  the  Ha- 
beas Corpus  Act  was  suspended ;  and  the  liber- 
ties of  all  men  were  thus  placed  at  the  mercy  of 
the  party  in  power.  The  Habeas  Corpus  Act  is 
an  Act  of  Parliament  which  Parliament  may  sus- 
pend. But  the  security  of  all  English  freemen 
from  arbitrary  arrest,  as  well  as  from  any  punish- 
ment without  a  trial  by  their  peers,  rests  not  on 
the  Habeas  Corpus  Act,  but  on  the  great  clause 
of  the  Great  Charter,  of  which  the  Habeas  Cor- 
pus Act  is  merely  a  supplement  and  guarantee. 
And  the  Great  Charter  is  not  an  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment :  it  is  a  fundamental  covenant  between  the 
government  and  all  the  people  of  these  realms, 
a  covenant  which  was  before  Parliament,  which 
is  above  Parliament,  and  with  which  if  Parlia- 
ment tampers,  it  may  continue  to  reign  by  force, 
but  it  will  no  longer  reign  by  right.  The  tyran- 
ny of  the  crown  is  past :  it  is  the  tyranny  of  the 
House  of  Commons  against  which  we  have  now 
to  guard.  A  House  of  Commons,  not  the  prerog- 


244  Three  English  Statesmen. 

ative  of  the  crown,  was  Pitt's  instrument  in  his 
aggressions  upon  public  liberty.  "  I  called  a  Par- 
liament in  Ireland,"  was  the  plea  of  Strafford, 
when  he  was  accused  of  arbitrary  government. 
"  Parliaments  without  parliamentary  liberties," 
replied  Pym, "  are  but  a  fair  and  plausible  way 
to  servitude."  A  class  Parliament  is  an  oligarchy 
with  a  broad  basis,  more  powerful  for  iniquity 
than  any  crown. 

In  the  cases  of  Home  Tooke  and  his  associates, 
the  government  well  knew  that  there  was  no  real 
evidence  of  treason.  The  charge  of  constructive 
treason  was  brought  in  instead  of  that  of  sedition, 
to  make  an  impression  on  the  nation  and  possess 
the  public  mind  with  the  idea  that  there  were 
terrible  conspiracies  on  foot.  But  to  bring  men 
to  trial  for  their  lives  for  such  a  purpose  wras  a 
profanation  of  the  courts  of  justice.  The  con- 
structive treason  was  made  out  thus :  "  The  pris- 
oners had  issued  a  prospectus  for  a  convention. 
To  issue  a  prospectus  for  a  convention  was  to 
enter  into  a  conspiracy  to  compel  the  king  to 
govern  otherwise  than  by  the  laws.  A  conspira- 
cy to  compel  the  king  to  govern  otherwise  than 
by  the  laws  was  a  conspiracy  to  depose  him  from 
the  royal  state,  title,  power,  and  government. 
Such  an  attempt  must  lead  to  resistance.  Resist- 
ance must  lead  to  the  deposition  of  the  king,  and 


Pitt.  245 

his  deposition  must  endanger  his  life."  Such  was 
the  substance  of  the  capital  indictment  which  it 
took  the  attorney-general  nine  hours  to  state. 
Supposing  that  policy  could  ever  find  a  place  in 
the  proceedings  of  public  justice,  no  sound  policy 
could  lead  the  government  to  incur  an  ignominious 

O  O 

defeat.  Sir  Archibald  Alison  says  the  trials  did 
good,  because  the  acquittal  of  the  prisoners 
showed  the  public  that  liberty  was  not  on  the 
decline,  and  the  people,  satisfied  with  this  great 
victory  over  their  supposed  oppressors,  relapsed 
into  their  ancient  loyalty.  A  profound  way  of 
attaching  the  people  to  the  government — to  ex- 
hibit it  to  them  as  a  tyrannical  aggressor  defeat- 
ed in  an  attempt  to  wrest  law  to  the  purposes  of 
judicial  murder ! 

It  was  in  one  of  these  State  trials,  where  the 
accused,  Major  Cartwright,  was  the  leader  of  a 
Parliamentary  Reform  Association,  that  the  Pitt 
of  former  days,  the  Pitt  who  had  once  been  a 
member  of  the  same  association  and  the  foremost 
champion  of  its  principles,  was  put  into  the  wit- 
ness-box by  the  defense  to  bear  witness  against 
Pitt  the  renegade  from  Reform,  the  persecutor  of 
Reformers  in  these  evil  times!  Pitt  might  plead 
that  circumstances  were  altered,  and  that  when 
circumstances  are  altered,  honorable  men  may 
change.  Honorable  men  may  change,  and  that 


246  Three  English  Statesmen. 

they  should  have  full  liberty  of  change  is  essen- 
tial to  the  public  interest  and  to  the  integrity  of 
public  life.  But  no  great  nature  ever  passes  a 
sponge  over  its  former  self:  no  great  nature  ever 
persecutes  old  friends. 

It  was  in  one  of  these  trials,  too,  that  Eldon, 
then  Sir  John  Scott  and  attorney-general,  opened 
his  attempt  to  procure  the  capital  conviction  of 
a  man  who  he  knew  had  done  nothing  worthy  of 
death  with  a  pathetic  exordium  on  his  own  dis-. 
interestedness  and  virtue.  "  He  should  have 
nothing  to  leave  his  children  but  his  good  name." 
And  then  he  wept.  The  solicitor-general  wept 
with  his  weeping  chief.  "  What  is  the  solicitor 
weeping  for?"  said  one  bystander  to  another. 
"  He  is  weeping  to  think  how  very  little  the  at- 
torney will  have  to  leave  his  children." 

The  juries  at  quarter  sessions  of  course  gave 
the  verdicts  desired  by  their  proprietors  on  the 
bench.  The  London  juries  on  the  whole  behaved 
well,  and  deserve  our  gratitude  for  their  guardian- 
ship of  public  liberty  in  its  hour  of  trial.  They 
had  not  then  been  so  entirely  relieved  of  appre- 
hension for  their  own  liberties  as  to  make  them 
regardless  of  the  liberties  of  others.  The  judges 
behaved  not  so  well.  The  tenure  of  the  judges 
is  independent.  But  after  all  they  belong  to  a 
political  party,  and  they  belong  to  a  social  class ; 


Pitt.  247 

and  these  are  influences  which,  even  on  the 
judgment-seat,  only  the  highest  and  strongest  na- 
tures can  entirely  put  aside.  How  to  appoint 
judges  who  shall  be  strictly  impartial  in  political 
cases,  is,  I  fear,  a  problem  still  to  be  solved. 
But  the  judge  who  does  in  political  cases  show 
himself  above  every  thing  but  justice  is  one  of 
the  greatest  and  noblest  benefactors  of  his  kind ; 
he  presents  law  in  its  highest  majesty  to  the  rever- 
ence of  the  people ;  and  extinguishes  in  the  hearts 
of  men  the  sources  of  violence  and  revolution. 

In  Scotland  the  Tory  reign  of  terror  was  worse 
than  in  England.  In  Scotland  there  was  scarcely 
the  mockery  of  a  representation  of  the  people. 
The  entire  electoral  body  was  not  more  than  four 
thousand.  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  had  each  a 
constituency  of  thirty -three  electors.  The  county 
of  Bute  had  one  resident  elector,  who  constituted 
the  meeting,  called  over  the  freeholders,  answered 
to  his  own  name,  moved  and  seconded  his  own 
nomination,  put  the  question  to  the  meeting,  and 
unanimously  elected  himself.  Every  county  and 
borough  was  in  the  hands  of  some  proprietor. 
The  whole  country  was  one  nest  of  jobbery  and 
corruption,  managed  in  the  interest  of  the  Tories, 
or  I  suppose  we  must  say  of  religion  and  the  Su- 
preme Being,  by  that  eminent  servant  of  Heaven, 
Mr.  Dundas.  The  juries  partook  of  the  general 


248  Three  English  Statesmen. 

slavisliness,  the  judges  were  fiercer  Tories  than 
the  judges  in  England,  and  much  less  honest. 
Thomas  Muir,  a  young  advocate  of  high  talents 
and  attainments,  was  an  active  champion  of  par- 
liamentary reform,  as  any  man  in  Scotland  who 
had  not  the  spirit  of  a  serf  would  have  been,  and 
had  been  a  delegate  to  the  Edinburgh  convention 
of  Associated  Friends  of  the  People.  An  indict- 
ment for  sedition  was  preferred  against  him  by 
the  government.  "  Every  incident  of  the  trial," 
says  Sir  Erskine  May,  the  author  of  the  "  Consti- 
tutional History  of  England,"  "marked  the  un- 
fairness and  the  cruel  spirit  of  his  judges.  In 
deciding  on  the  relevancy  of  the  indictment,  they 
dilated  upon  the  enormity  of  the  offenses  charged, 
which  in  their  judgment  amounted  almost  to 
high  treason,  the  excellence  of  our  constitution, 
and  the  terrors  of  the  French  Revolution.  It 
was  plain  that  any  attempt  to  amend  our  institu- 
tions was  in  their  eyes  a  crime.  All  the  jury- 
men, selected  by  the  sheriff  and  picked  by  the 
presiding  judge,  were  members  of  an  association 
at  Goldsmiths'  Hall  who  had  erased  Muir's  name 
from  their  books  as  an  enemy  to  the  constitution. 
He  objected  that  such  men  had  already  pre- 
judged his  cause ;  but  he  was  told  that  he  might 
as  well  object  to  his  judges,  who  had  sworn  to 
maintain  the  constitution.  The  witnesses  for  the 


Pitt.  249 

crown  failed  to  prove  any  seditious  speeches, 
while  they  all  bore  testimony  to  the  earnestness 
with  which  Muir  had  counseled  order  and  obedi- 
ence to  the  law.  Throughout  the  trial  he  was 
browbeaten  and  threatened  by  the  judges.  A  con- 
temptible witness  against  him  was  caressed  by 
the  public  prosecutor,  and  complimented  by  the 
court ;  while  a  witness  for  the  defense  was  hastily 
committed  for  concealing  the  truth,  and  Muir, 
when  he  offered  to  speak  on  his  witness's  behalf, 
was  silenced  and  told  that  he  had  no  right  to  in- 
terfere in  the  business.  In  the  spirit  of  a  bygone 
age  of  judicature  the  lord  advocate  denounced 
Muir  as  a  demon  of  sedition  and  mischief.  He 
even  urged  it  as  a  proof  of  guilt  that  a  letter  had 
been  found  among  his  papers  addressed  to  Mr. 
Fyshe  Palmer,  who  was  about  to  be  tried  for  sedi- 
tion." Let  us  hope  that  the  age  of  judicature, 
when  a  dominant  party  in  possession  of  party 
courts  of  justice,  or  of  those  still  more  convenient 
instruments,  courts  of  martial  law,  could  murder 
the  objects  of  its  political  hatred  under  the  form 
of  a  trial,  is  as  completely  by-gone  as  Sir  Erskine 
May  imagines.  Scroggs  and  Jeffreys  are  in  their 
graves  of  infamy ;  but  their  spirit  is  not  quite 
dead.  Muir  defended  himself  gallantly,  and  drew 
from  the  audience  applause,  which  one  of  the 

judges  noticed  as  a  proof  of  the  seditious  feelings 

L  2 


250  Three  English  Statesmen. 

of  the  people.  He  asserted  that  lie  was  brought 
to  trial  for  promoting  parliamentary  reform. 
"The  Lord  Justice-Clerk  Braxfield,"  remarks  Sir 
Erskine  May,  "  confirmed  this  assertion  by  charg- 
ing the  jury  that  to  preach  the  necessity  of  re- 
form at  a  time  of  excitement  was  seditious."  The 
judge  harangued  the  jury  against  parliamentary 
reform.  "The  landed  interest,"  he  said,  "alone 
had  a  right  to  be  represented  :  as  for  the  rabble 
who  had  nothing  but  personal  property,  what 
hold  had  the  nation  on  them  ?"  Another  judge 
said,  "  If  punishment  adequate  to  the  crime  of  se- 
dition were  to  be  sought  for,  it  could  not  be 
found  in  our  law,  now  that  torture  was  happily 
abolished."  Torture  is  not  abolished,  if  the  theo- 
ries now  maintained  by  servile  lawyers  and  pre- 
rogative politicians  on  the  subject  of  martial  law 
be  true :  if  these  theories  be  true,  English  free- 
men are  still  liable  to  torture.  Muir  was  sen- 
tenced to  transportation  for  fourteen  years.  "  Of 
the  three  Roman  punishments,  crucifixion,  expo- 
sure to  wild  beasts,  and  deportation,"  said  one 
of  the  judges,  "we  have  chosen  the  mildest." 
Chosen  the  mildest  he  had  not,  but  a  people  not 
so  barbarous  as  its  rulers  had  forced  him  to  take 
it.  In  another  trial,  a  judge  said,  in  summing  up 
to  the  jury,  "  Gentlemen,  the  right  of  universal 
suffrage  the  subjects  of  this  country  never  enjoy- 


Pitt.  251 

ed ;  and  were  they  to  enjoy  it,  they  would  not 
long  enjoy  either  liberty  or  a  free  constitution. 
You  will  therefore  consider  whether  telling  the 
people  that  they  have  a  just  right  to  what  would 
unquestionably  be  tantamount  to  a  total  subver- 
sion of  the  constitution,  is  such  a  writing  as  any 
person  is  entitled  to  compose,  to  print,  and  to 
publish."  Under  such  law,  delivered  from  the 
bench  of  justice,  a  man  was  condemned  to  trans- 
portation for  seven  years.  If,  as  Pym  said,  parlia- 
ments without  parliamentary  liberties  are  but  a 
fair  and  plausible  way  to  servitude,  jury  trial 
without  impartial  judges  and  honest  juries  is  but 
a  fair  and  plausible  way  to  murder. 

Was  Pitt  answerable  for  all  this?  He  was. 
With  full  knowledge  of  the  facts  he  defended 
these  outrages  and  their  perpetrators  in  Parlia- 
ment. The  infamy  can  not  be  wiped  away  from 
his  once  pure  and  patriotic  name.  Lord  Stan- 
hope pleads  that  these  and  still  more  violent 
measures  were  demanded  by  the  temper  of  the 
time.  Does  not  the  very  fact,  that  the  temper  of 
the  time  was  what  Lord  Stanhope  states  it  to  have 
been,  prove  that  there  was  no  danger  of  revolu- 
tion, and  therefore  not  even  that  wretched  justifi- 
cation for  these  outrages  on  liberty  and  law? 
And  if  the  demand  of  a  party  was  a  warrant  for 
violence  in  the  case  of  the  Tories,  was  it  also  a 


252  Three  English  Statesmen. 

warrant  for  violence  in  the  case  of  the  Jacobins  ? 
It  seems  that  Pitt  even  sank  so  far  below  his 
nobler  self  as  to  entertain  the  thought  of  taking 
advantage  of  the  free  language  of  his  rival,  Fox, 
and  committing  him  to  the  Tower. 

The  worst  reign  of  Terror,  however — a  Reign 
of  Terror  in  no  figurative  sense — was  in  Ireland. 
Unhappy  Ireland,  and  still  more  unhappy  En- 
gland if  Ireland  is  always  to  be  our  weakness  and 
our  shame,  the  standing  confutation  alike  of  our 
boasted  statesmanship  and  of  our  boasted  love 
of  justice!  In  1795,  the  Duke  of  Portland  and 
the  Whig  section  of  the  cabinet,  I  fear  against 
the  wishes  of  Pitt,  had  sent  over  Lord  Fitzwilliam 
as  lord-lieutenant,  with  a  policy  of  relief  and  con- 
ciliation. But  Fitzwilliam  had  been  too  open  in 
proclaiming  his  mission ;  he  had  been  too  hasty 
in  setting  his  heel  on  the  agents  of  tyranny  and 
corruption ;  most  fatal  error  of  all,  he  had  dis- 
missed one  of  the  great  robber  house  of  Beres- 
ford.  The  whole  nest  of  jobbers  were  immediate- 
ly alarmed ;  and  as  the  means  of  arresting  justice 
they  naturally  had  recourse  to  religion.  They 
appealed  against  Catholic  relief  to  the  conscience 
of  the  king.  We  are  frail  beings,  but  conscience 
is  always  obeyed  when  she  bids  us  deny  a  right 
to  others.  Fitzwilliam  fell ;  not,  it  is  to  be  fear- 
ed, to  the  displeasure  of  Pitt,  and  was  succeeded 


Pitt.  253 

by  Lord  Camden.  Catholic  relief  was  thrown 
out  by  the  Irish  Parliament,  the  government  now 
declaring  against  it.  Not  contented  with  this, 
the  Protestants  began  to  organize  themselves  for 
the  repression  of  the  Catholics;  the  Catholics 
organized  on  their  side ;  and  the  hatred  of  the 
rival  races  and  creeds  burst  forth. 

I  have  myself  sought  and  found  in  the  study 
of  Irish  history  the  explanation  of  the  paradox, 
that  a  people  with  so  many  gifts,  so  amiable 
naturally,  so  submissive  to  rulers,  and  everywhere 
but  in  their  own  country  industrious,  are  in  their 
own  country  by-words  of  idleness,  lawlessness, 
disaffection,  and  agrarian  crime.  But  I  will  here 
follow  Mr.  Massey,  not  only  one  of  the  most  mat- 
ter-of-fact of  writers,  but  a  most  unquestionable 
enemy  to  revolution.  Mr.  Massey  writes  thus : 
"  Lord  Carhampton,  the  general  commanding  the 
forces  in  the  disturbed  districts,  let  loose  his 
troops  upon  the  wretched  peasantry.  It  was 
enough  for  a  magistrate,  a  squireen,  or  even  a 
farmer  to  point  out  any  person  as  suspected,  to 
have  his  habitation  burned  down,  his  family  turn- 
ed adrift,  and  himself  either  shot  or  transported, 
without  trial,  without  warrant,  without  inquiry. 
An  Act  of  Indemnity  was  passed^  by  the  Irish 
Parliament,  in  the  session  of  1796,  to  protect 
these  enormities;  and  the  Insurrection  Act  gave 


254  Three  English  Statesmen. 

them,  for  the  future  the  sanction  of  law.  The 
suspension  of  the  habeas  corpus  completed  this 
barbarous  code,  which,  in  effect,  outlawed  the 
whole  people  of  Ireland."  The  government 
armed  a  great  body  of  Protestant  yeomanry, 
who  were  allowed  to  wear  the  Orange  ribbon, 
the  badge  of  ascendancy.  "The  cruelties,"  says 
Mr.  Massey,  "perpetrated  by  these  men,  both 
before  the  rebellion,  and  while  it  was  raging,  and 
after  it  was  suppressed,  differed  only  in  degree 
from  the  worst  enormities  of  the  French  revolu- 
tionists. Under  the  authority  to  search  for  con- 
cealed arms,  any  person  whom  any  ruffian,  call- 
ing himself  a  Protestant  and  a  loyalist,  and  either 
with  or  without  a  military  uniform,  chose  to  sus- 
pect or  to  pretend  to  suspect,  was  liable  to  be 
seized,  tortured,  and  put  to  death.  Hundreds  of 
unoffending  people,  and  people  who  were  guilty 
of  no  other  offense  than  professing  the  creed  of 
their  fathers,  and  of  letting  fall  a  word  of  discon- 
tent, were  flogged  till  they  were  insensible,  or 
made  to  stand  upon  one  foot  on  a  pointed  stake. 
These  were  the  most  ordinary  punishments. 
Sometimes  the  wretched  victim  was  half  hanged, 
or  the  scalp  was  torn  from  the  head  by  a  pitched 
cap.  Catholics  and  reputed  malcontents  of  the 
better  class  were  subjected  to  still  worse  treat- 
ment. Militia  and  yeomanry,  as  well  as  the  regu- 


Pitt.  255 

lar  troops,  were  billeted  on  them  at  free  quarters; 
and  this  billet  appears  to  have  been  invariably 
construed  as  an  unlimited  license  for  robbery, 
devastation,  ravishment,  and,  in  case  of  resistance, 
murder." 

Sir  Ralph.  Abercromby,  on  assuming  the  com- 
mand of  the  army  in  Ireland,  branded  these 
ruffians  in  general  orders  as  formidable  to  every 
body  but  the  enemy.  To  him  it  did  not  appear 
essential  to  the  honor  of  the  profession  that  a 
soldier  should  be  licensed  to  play  the  butcher. 
But  he  was  at  once  hustled  out  of  his  command. 
The  Catholics,  if  they  had  not  been  goaded  to 
despair,  would  not  have  risen.  Their  priests  had 
no  sympathy  with  the  Atheists  of  the  French 
Republic.  But  the  conduct  of  the  Protestants 
and  of  the  government  drove  them  into  the  arms 
of  France  and  of  the  revolutionary  conspirators 
of  their  own  country,  who  were  mostly  not  Cath- 
olics, but  Protestants,  if  they  had  any  religion  at 
all.  "When  the  Catholic  peasantry  did  rise,  they 
rose  with  the  ruthless  fury  of  tortured  and  em- 
bruted  slaves,  and  perpetrated  nameless  atrocities 
in  their  turn.  Then  the  saturnalia  of  martial 
law  were  proclaimed ;  and  under  cover  of  that 
proclamation,  the  vengeance  of  the  dominant  race 
was  poured  out,  as  we  have  just  seen  the  ven- 
geance of  a  dominant  race  poured  out,  upon  the 


256  Three  English  Statesmen. 

victims  of  its  hate.  Of  that  phrase  martial  law, 
absurd  and  self-contradictory  as  it  is,  each  part 
has  a  meaning.  The  term  martial  suspends  the 
right  of  citizen's  to  legal  trial ;  the  term  law  sus- 
pends the  claim  of  an  enemy  to  quarter  and  the 
other  rights  of  civilized  war.  The  whole  com- 
pound is  the  fiend's  charter ;  and  the  public  man 
who  connives  at  its  introduction,  who  fails  in  his 
day  and  in  his  place  to  resist  it  at  whatever  cost 
or  hazard  to  himself,  is  a  traitor  to  civilization 
and  humanity,  and  though  official  morality  may 
applaud  him  at  the  time,  his  name  will  stand 
in  history  accursed  and  infamous  forever.  The 
first  notable  case  under  martial  law  in  Ireland 
was  that  of  Sir  Edward  Crosbie,  a  gentleman  re- 
siding near  Carlow,  where  a  rising  had  taken 
place.  I  will  give  the  case  in  the  words  of  Mr. 
Massey.  "  It  unfortunately  happened,"  says  that 
writer,  "that  the  miserable  rabble,  before  enter- 
ing the  town,  had  paraded  in  the  grounds  of  Sir 
Edward  Crosbie,  who  resided  at  a  distance  of  a 
mile  and  a  half  from  Carlow.  There  was  not  a 
title  of  proof  that  this  gentleman  was  in  any  way 
connected  with  the  rioters,  or  that  he  had  invited 
them  to  assemble  on  his  lawn  at  midnight,  pre- 
paratory to  their  lawless  proceedings.  He  had 
not  accompanied  them,  nor  did  it  appear  that  he 
held  any  communication  with  them.  But  Sir 


Pitt.  257 

Edward  was  a  friend  to  Parliamentary  Reform, 
and  hostile  to  the  oppression  of  the  tenantry  by 
their  landlords.  To  be  friendly  to  the  poor  and 
to  reform  was  presumptive  evidence  of  disaffec- 
tion ;  and  presumptive  evidence  of  disaffection 
was  sufficient  proof  of  complicity  in  the  rebellion. 
The  day  after  the  attempt  on  Carlow  several  per- 
sons were  seized,  tried  by  court-martial,  and 
hanged  for  this  offense.  Among  others  Sir  Ed- 
ward Crosbie  was  dragged  before  a  set  of  igno- 
rant, blood-thirsty  ruffians,  who  styled  themselves 
a  court-martial.  There  was  not  a  particle  of  evi- 
dence which  could  have  had  the  least  weight 
with  a  fairly  constituted  court,  though  Catholic 
prisoners  had  been,  by  torture  and  promises  of 
pardon,  converted  into  witnesses  against  the  ac- 
cused. Numerous  loyalists  came  forward  to 
state  what  every  body  in  the  neighborhood  knew, 
that  Sir  Edward  was  a  good  subject  of  his  majes- 
ty, as  well  as  one  of  the  few  humane  and  accom- 
plished gentlemen  that  Ireland  possessed.  But 
these  witnesses  were  excluded  from  the  place 
where  the  proceedings  were  held  by  the  bayonets 
of  the  soldiery.  A  gentleman  of  rank  and  for- 
tune, who  thought  that  Parliament  should  be  re- 
formed, and  that  squireens  should  not  be  permit- 
ted to  grind  and  insult  the  peasantry,  was  a  dan- 
gerous member  of  society,  and  must  be  made  an 


258  Three  English  Statesmen. 

example  of  to  deter  others.  Accordingly,  Sir  Ed- 
ward Crosbie  was  doomed  to  death  by  a  court- 
martial,  the  president  of  which  was  an  illiterate 
fellow  who  could  not  spell.  The  sentence  was 
immediately  put  in  execution  at  the  gallows ;  and 
the  remains  of  the  murdered  gentleman  were 
abused  in  a  manner  shocking  to  humanity." 
The  passages  of  history  which  derive  their  char- 
acter from  the  lower  and  viler  passions  are  apt  to 
repeat  themselves  with  great  fidelity. 

Lord  Cornwallis,  who  had  at  length  been  sent 
over  by  Pitt,  in  the  place  of  the  wretched  Camden, 
to  stop  these  orgies  of  blood,  states  in  one  of  his 
letters  that  under  martial  law  "  numberless  mur- 
ders are  hourly  committed  without  any  process 
or  examination  whatever."  "  The  yeomanry,"  he 
says, "  are  in  the  style  of  the  loyalists  in  America, 
only  much  more  numerous  and  powerful,  and  a 
thousand  times  more  ferocious.  These  men  have 
served  their  country,  but  they  now  take  the  lead 
in  rapine  and  murder.  The  Irish  militia,  with  few 
officers,  and  those  chiefly  of  the  worst  kind,  follow 
closely  on  the  heels  of  the  yeomanry  in  murder 
and  every  kind  of  atrocity ;  and  the  Fencibles 
take  a  share,  although  much  behindhand  with  the 
others.  The  language  of  the  principle  persons  of 
the  country  all  tends  to  encourage  this  system  of 
blood ;  and  the  conversation,  even  at  my  table, 


Pitt.  259 

where  you  will  suppose  I  do  all  I  can  to  prevent 
it,  always  tons  on  hanging,  shooting,  burning,  etc. 
And  if  a  priest  has  been  put  to  death,  the  greatest 
joy  is  expressed  by  the  whole  company."  He 
asserts  from  his  own  knowledge  of  military  affairs 
that  of  the  numbers  of  the  enemy  reputed  to  be 
killed,  a  very  small  proportion  only  are  really  kill- 
ed in  battle — and  adds  that "  he  is  afraid  that  any 
man  in  a  brown  coat,  who  is  found  within  several 
miles  of  the  field  of  action,  is  butchered  without 
discrimination."  He  describes  the  principal  per- 
sons of  the  country  and  the  members  of  both 
Houses  of  Parliament  as  "averse  to  all  acts  of 
clemency,  and  desiring  to  pursue  measures  that 
would  terminate  in  the  extirpation  of  the  inhabit- 
ants and  the  destruction  of  the  country."  Lord 
Cornwallis  was  no  friend  of  rebels :  he  had  com- 
manded against  rebels  in  America :  he  was  a  Tory : 
he  showed  no  weakness  in  quenching  the  embers 
of  the  insurrection  in  Ireland.  But  a  burst  of  loyal 
execration  arose  against  his  detestable  clemency. 
Dr.  Duiguenan,  the  organ  of  the  Orange  party, 
wrote  to  Lord  Castlereagh  that  the  conduct  of 
the  lord-lieutenant  had  rendered  him  an  object 
not  only  of  disgust,  but  of  abhorrence  to  every  loy- 
al man.  "  You  write,"  says  Cornwallis  to  General 
Ross, "  as  if  you  believed  that  there  was  any  foun- 
dation for  all  the  lies  and  nonsensical  clamor  about 


260  Three  English  Statesmen. 

my  lenity.  On  my  arrival  in  this  country,  I  put 
a  stop  to  the  burning  of  houses  and  murder  of  the 
inhabitants  by  the  yeomen,  or  any  other  person 
who  delighted  in  that  amusement ;  to  the  flogging 
for  the  purpose  of  extorting  confession,  and  to  the 
free  quarters,  which  comprehended  universal  rape 
and  robbery  throughout  the  country."  A  party 
of  the  Mount  Kennedy  corps  of  yeomanry  (again 
I  tell  my  story  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Massey)  were, 
on  an  autumn  night  in  the  year  1798,  patrolling 
the  village  of  Delbary,  in  the  county  of  Wicklow. 
Two  or  three  of  the  party,  led  by  Whollaghan, 
one  of  their  number,  entered  the  cottage  of  a  la- 
boring man  named  Dogherty,  and  asked  whether 
there  were  any  bloody  rebels  there  ?  The  only  in- 
mates of  the  cabin  were  Dogherty's  wife  and  a 
sick  lad,  her  son,  who  was  eating  his  supper. 
"Whollaghan  asked  if  the  boy  was  Dogherty's  son, 
and  being  told  he  was — "Then  you  dog,"  said 
Whollaghan, "  you  are  to  die  here."  "  I  hope  not," 
answered  the  poor  lad;  and  he  prayed, if  there 
was  any  charge  against  him,  to  be  taken  before 
Mr.  Latouche,  a  magistrate  in  the  neighborhood,  of 
known  humanity  and  justice.  The  fellow  replied 
that  he  cared  nothing  for  Latouche,  and  raised  his 
gun.  The  mother  entreated  him,  for  the  love  of 
God,  to  take  her  life  instead  of  her  child's.  "Whol- 
laghan, with  a  volley  of  abuse,  pulled  the  trigger 


Pitt.  261 

twice,  but  the  piece  missed  fire.  A  comrade  then 
handed  him  another  gun ;  and  the  mother  rushed 
at  the  muzzle  to  shield  her  son.  In  the  struggle 
the  piece  went  off,  and  the  ball  broke  young 
Dogherty's  arm.  When  the  boy  fell,  the  assassins 
left  the  cabin ;  but  Whollaghan  returned,  and 
seeing  the  lad  supported  by  his  mother,  cried  out, 
"  Is  not  the  dog  dead  yet  ?"  "  Oh,  yes,  sir,"  said 
the  poor  woman,  "he  is  dead  enough."  "For 
fear  he  is  not,"  said  Whollaghan,  "let  him  take 
this."  And  with  a  deliberate  aim  he  fired  a 
fourth  time,  and  Dogherty  dropped  dead  out  of 
his  mother's  arms.  Whollaghan  was  tried  for  the 
murder,  not  by  a  civil  tribunal  as  he  should 
have  been,  but  by  court-martial.  The  facts  were 
not  disputed ;  but  the  defense  was  that  the  poor 
boy  had  been  a  rebel,  and  that  the  prisoner  was 
a  humane  and  loyal  subject.  That  the  Dogh- 
ertys  were  rebels  is  probable  enough;  as  in- 
deed, says  Mr.  Massey,  whom  I  am  still  follow- 
ing, it  was  hardly  possible  that  a  Catholic  peas- 
ant could  have  been  any  thing  else.  But  no 
legal  evidence  of  the  fact  was  tendered;  and 
the  hearsay,  which  was  admitted,  was  about  as 
credible  as  the  oath  of  the  Orangemen  who  came 
to  give  Whollaghan  a  character  for  humanity. 
The  real  defense  was  that  the  prisoner  and  his 
companions  had  been  sent  out  with  general  orders 


262  Three  English  Statesmen. 

to  shoot  any  body  they  pleased.  "  The  court," 
remarks  Mr.  Massey, "  seemed  to  have  been  of 
opinion  that  such  orders  were  neither  unusual  or 
unreasonable;  and  it  is  difficult  to  extract  from 
their  finding  that  they  thought  the  prisoner  had 
been  guilty  even  of  an  error  in  judgment." 
They  found  that  "  the  prisoner  did  shoot  and  kill 
Thomas  Dogherty,  a  rebel ;  but  acquitted  him  of 
any  malicious  or  willful  intention  of  murder." 

Their  sentiments  seem,  in  fact,  to  have  been 
pretty  much  the  same  as  those  which  prevail  in 
high  official  regions  now.  The  trial  took  place 
at  Dublin.  The  president  of  the  court-martial 
was  one  of  the  leading  members  of  that  order 
who  are  the  guardians  of  an  honor  and  a  moral- 
ity above  those  of  the  common  herd :  he  was  the 
Earl  of  Enniskillen. 

In  Tipperary,  Mr.  Thomas  Judkin  Fitzgerald, 
a  man  of  conspicuous  loyalty,  was  made  high-sher- 
iff, and  acted  as  a  sort  of  provost-marshal  in  that 
district.  His  plan,  says  Mr.  Massey,  was  to  seize 
persons  whom  he  chose  to  suspect,  often  without 
the  slightest  ground,  if  not  from  sheer  malice, 
and  by  dint  of  the  lash  and  threats  of  instant 
death,  to  extort  confessions  of  guilt  and  accusa- 
tions of  other  persons.  He  recommended  himself 
especially  to  the  approbation  of  all  loyal  men  by 
attacking  a  somewhat  higher  class  of  persons 


Pitt.  263 

than  most  of  his  compeers  ventured  to  attack. 
Mr.  Wright,  a  teacher  of  languages  at  Clonmel, 
and  a  man  of  good  family,  heard  that  he  was  sus- 
pected. He  hastened  to  deliver  himself  up,  in 
the  hope  that  he  might  thus  save  his  character 
and  life.  But  Fitzgerald  was  not  to  be  disap- 
pointed of  his  victim.  He  received  Mr.  Wright 
with  a  torrent  of  abuse,  and  ordered  him  to  fall 
on  his  knees  to  receive  his  sentence.  "  You  are  a 
rebel,"  said  he,  "  and  a  principal  in  this  rebellion. 
You  are  to  receive  five  hundred  lashes,  and  then 
to  be  shot."  The  poor  man  begged  for  'time,  and 
was  so  rash  as  to  ask  for  a  trial.  This  aroused 
Fitzgerald  to  fury ;  he  railed  at  his  prisoner  for 
daring  to  open  his  mouth  after  he  was  condemn- 
ed. Wright  was  hurried  to  the  flogging  ladders, 
which  were  erected  in  the  main  street ;  and  ex- 
pecting immediate  death,  had  placed  his  hat  be- 
fore his  face  while  he  muttered  a  prayer.  Fitz- 
gerald with  his  own  hand  tore  away  the  hat, 
trampled  on  it,  dragged  his  fainting  victim  by  the 
hair,  kicked  him,  and  finally  slashed  him  with  a 
sword,  drawing  blood.  Wright  was  then  fasten- 
ed to  the  ladder.  Fifty  lashes  had  been  inflicted, 
when  a  Major  Biall  came  up  and  asked  what 
Wright  had  done.  The  sheriff  answered  by  fling- 
ing Biall  a  note  taken  from  the  person  of  Wright, 
as  a  justification  of  the  punishment  to  which  he 


264  Three  English  Statesmen. 

was  subjected.  The  note  was  in  French — a  lan- 
guage of  which  Fitzgerald  was  wholly  ignorant— 
and  contained  two  lines  excusing  the  writer  for 
having  failed  in  a  visiting  engagement.  Riall  as- 
sured Fitzgerald  that  the  note  was  perfectly 
harmless ;  nevertheless,  the  lash  continued  to  de- 
scend until  the  quivering  entrails  were  visible 
through  the  flayed  flesh.  The  hangman  was  then 
ordered  to  apply  his  thongs  to  a  part  of  the  body 
which  had  not  yet  been  torn,  while  the  sheriff 
himself  went  to  the  general  in  command  of  the 
district  for  an  order  to  put  his  prisoner  to  death. 
The  order,  however,  was  not  given,  and  Wright 
was  released. 

To  add  to  the  bright  roll  of  English  honor, 
Mr.  Thomas  Judkin  Fitzgerald  received  a  pen- 
sion, and,  at  the  Union,  was  made  a  baronet  of 
the  United  Kingdom. 

These  men  were  not  fiends ;  they  were  a  domi- 
nant class,  the  planter-class  of  Ireland,  maddened 
with  cruel  panic  and  administering  martial  law. 
It  is  good  that  these  things  should  be  recalled  to 
mind  when  we  see  men  of  letters  and  artists,  who 
have  been  brought  up  in  the  air  of  English  liber- 
ty and  within  the  sound  of  Christian  church  bells, 
proposing  to  blow  Fenians  from  guns,  and  to  re-en- 
act on  Irish  insurgents  the  atrocities  which  mark- 
ed the  putting  down  of  the  Indian  mutineers. 


Pitt.  265 

Ireland  had  what  one  of  our  prelates  calls  a 
Missionary  Church ;  that  is  an  establishment  pro- 
fusely endowed  out  of  the  penury  and  the  misery 
of  the  Irish  people ;  and  the  bishops  and  clergy 
of  which  were  intended,  I  suppose,  to  be  placed 
by  their  wealth  and  privileges  above  the  passions 
of  any  class,  and  enabled  boldly  to  preach  justice 
and  mercy.  What  were  they  doing?  "Were 
they  preaching  justice  and  mercy,  or  were  they 
doing  what  the  prelates  and  clergy  of  the  planter 
church  of  Jamaica  do  now — drawing  up  certifi- 
cates of  Christian  character  for  men  whose  hands 
were  red  with  innocent  blood?  It  is  a  point 
which  I  have  never  been  able  clearly  to  ascertain. 

There  is  nothing  in  this  revolting  history  more 
revolting  than  the  cant  about  loyalty.  Loyalty 
is  not  due  from  the  conquered  and  the  oppressed 
to  the  conqueror  and  oppressor.  Nothing  is  due 
but  submission,  which  the  conqueror  and  oppress- 
or must  enforce  as  best  he  can. 

The  Indemnity  Act  passed  by  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment unfortunately  proved  insufficient  to  cover 
all  these  acts  of  the  supporters  of  order,  and  es- 
pecially the  use  of  torture.  Certain  bloody-mind- 
ed persecutors,  pseudo-philanthropists,  and  Hi- 
berno-philists  were  proceeding  to  appeal  to  the 
courts  of  law  against  indiscriminate  butchery,  tor- 
ture, and  arson.  So  the  Parliament — of  the  tern- 

M 


266  Three  English  Statesmen. 

per  and  language  of  whose  members,  Lords  and 
Commons  alike,  we  have  heard  Lord  Cornwallis's 
description — passed  a  more  comprehensive  Act, 
which  effectually  screened  every  murderer,  tor- 
turer, and  incendiary  from  the  law.  Safe  under 
this  Act,  Fitzgerald,  when  arraigned  before  a  jury, 
vaunted  his  exploits  in  the  face  of  justice.  He 
named  several  persons  whom  he  had  flogged  un- 
der circumstances  more  aggravated  than  those  be- 
fore the  court.  He  mentioned  one  man  who  had 
cut  his  throat  to  escape  the  horrors  and  ignominy 
of  torture.  He  admitted  or  boasted  that  in  his 
search  for  rebels  he  had  flogged  many  persons 
who  had  proved  to  be  perfectly  innocent.  Lord 
Avonmore,  who  tried  the  case,  did  not  dissemble 
his  grief  and  indignation  at  having  to  administer 
such  a  law  as  that  which  had  recently  been  enact- 
ed. After  dwelling  on  the  flagrancy  of  the  out- 
rage, for  which  he  said  no  damages  would  have 
been  too  great,  he  ended  by  saying  that  the 
words  of  the  Act  placed  an  insuperable  bar  be- 
tween injury  and  redress,  and  set  all  equity  and 
justice  at  defiance.  And  with  that  he  dashed 
the  Act  upon  the  cushion,  and  threw  himself 
back  on  his  seat. 

Lord  Moria  brought  the  state  of  things  in  Ire- 
land before  the  British  Legislature;  of  course 
without  effect.  The  government  supported  their 


Pitt.  267 

subordinates.  If  it  is  the  duty  of  governments 
to  support  their  subordinates,  the  people  must 
support  themselves.  Statesmen  are  learning  to 
make  an  easy  reputation  for  chivalry  by  support- 
ing their  subordinates  at  the  expense  of  human- 
ity, justice,  and  the  honor  of  the  nation.  Public 
morality  requires  that  a  subordinate  should  be 
supported  in  difficulty  always,  in  error  sometimes, 
in  crime  never. 

Lord  Stanhope  charitably  ascribes  these  hor- 
rors, in  the  refusal  of  all  inquiry  into  which  he 
apparently  concurs,  to  a  helpless  crisis  in  human 
affairs,  such  as  is  described  by  the  Cardinal  de 
Retz,  caused  by  accident  and  mischance,  not  by 
the  faults  or  errors  of  mankind.  It  was  no  help- 
less crisis,  but  the  natural  consequence  of  Protest- 
ant ascendancy  in  Ireland,  sustained  by  the  oli- 
garchical government  and  hierarchy  of  this  coun- 
try. They  were  the  authors  before  God  of  the 
Rebellion,  though  the  people  died  for  it  by  earth- 
ly law.  And  how  far,  I  ask  again,  is  the  benefit 
of  these  excuses  to  extend  ?  If  ever  the  hand  of 
fate  was  seen  in  history,  it  was  in  the  history  of 
the  French  Revolution.  If  ever  a  crisis  could  be 
called  helpless,,  it  was  that  of  1793.  Is  this  to 
absolve  the  Jacobins?  No;  there  have  been 
misfortunes  in  Irish  annals — misfortunes  which 
were  not  faults — misfortunes  which  the  rulers  of 


268  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Ireland  in  past  times  may  fairly  plead  in  their 
own  excuse  at  the  bar  of  history.  The  partial 
nature  of  the  Anglo-Norman  Conquest  of  Ireland, 
which  led  to  the  formation  of  an  English  pale  in- 
stead of  a  national  aristocracy  mingling  in  course 
of  time  with  the  native  race,  was  the  original 
spring  from  which  this  bitterness  flowed.  But 
Protestant  ascendancy  was  a  fault,  not  a  misfor- 
tune. And  the  obstinate  maintenance  in  the  in- 
terest of  a  class  of  an  alien  church  and  an  alien 
land  law  in  Ireland  are  faults,  not  misfortunes, 
now.  The  guilt  of  the  consequences  in  the  eye 
of  Heaven  rests  on  the  government,  though  still, 
by  earthly  law,  the  people  pay  the  penalty. 

The  appearance  of  Hoche  and  his  French  ar- 
mament of  liberation  in  Bantry  Bay  was  a  warn- 
ing which  could  not  be  neglected.  Irish  disaffec- 
tion, if  it  is  not  formidable  in  itself,  will  always 
be  formidable  when  it  is  backed  by  foreign  aid. 
If  Hoche  had  landed,  he  would,  for  the  time  at 
least,  have  been  master  of  Ireland.  The  Orange 
yeomanry  and  militia,  though  they  could  murder, 
burn,  and  torture,  could  not  stand  before  an  enemy, 
as  they  showed  when  they  were  led  against  the 
small  French  force  afterward  lande^L  by  Humbert. 
And  with  steam  instead  of  sails  Hoche  would 
have  landed.  It  had  become  manifest  that  the 
Orange  government  of  Ireland  was  not  only  crirn- 


Pitt.  269 

inal  but  dangerous.  Pitt  now  resolved  to  carry 
the  Union,  and  the  Union  was  carried.  It  was 
carried  through  an  Irish  Parliament  in  which  the 
Irish  people  were  not  represented,  and  which  had 
no  sort  of  right  or  title  to  dispose  of  the  independ- 
ence of  the  nation.  And  through  that  Parlia- 
ment it  was  carried  by  bribery  and  corruption  of 
every  kind,  including  the  prostitution  of  honors 
and  offices  as  well  as  pensions,  so  foul  and  infamous 
that  men  of  honor  such  as  Lord  Cornwallis,  who 
were  employed  in  the  operation,  shrank  with 
loathing  from,  their  task.  One  million  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty  thousand  pounds  were  distribu- 
ted among  the  proprietors  of  boroughs  as  compen- 
sation for  the  loss  of  their  means  of  preying  on 
the  State,  and  the  peerage  was  again  recruited 
with  houses  which  derive  from  this  noble  origin 
their  divine  right  of  legislating  for  the  nation. 
The  acquiescence  of  the  Catholics  was  procured 
by  fraud  ;  the  hope  of  emancipation  was  distinct- 
ly held  out  to  them,  as  the  price  of  their  concur- 
rence, and  and  was  not  fulfilled.  The  Union  was 
a  good  and  an  indispensable  measure.  It  was, 
as  Pitt  saw,  the  only  chance  of  saving  Ireland 
from  Protestant  ascendancy  and  provincial  tyr- 
anny :  and  legally  of  course  it  is  perfectly  valid. 
To  give  it  moral  validity,  it  requires  the  free  rati- 
fication of  the  Irish  people.  When  the  Union  is 


270  Three  English  Statesmen. 

what  Pitt  declared  it  was  to  be,  a  union  of  equal 
laws,  that  ratification  will  be  obtained. 

Pitt  is  generally  held  to  have  been  a  bad  war 
minister.  That  he  was  not  a  successful  war  minis- 
ter is  certain :  and  in  war,  if  in  any  thing,  minis- 
ters may  be  judged  by  their  success.  His  navy 
gained  victories  by  dint  of  British  seamanship 
and  courage.  His  military  operations  ended  al- 
most uniformly  in  disaster.  His  forces  were  never 
found  on  a  decisive  field.  Like  a  bad  chess-play- 
er he  ran  over  the  board  taking  pawns,  while  the 
adversary  was  checking  his  king.  He  carried 
his  victorious  arms  from  Tobago  to  St.  Domingo, 
from  St.  Domingo  to  St.  Lucia,  and  from  St.  Lu- 
cia to  Guadaloupe.  This  was  the  traditional 
mode  of  making  war  on  France ;  and  he  did  not  see 
how  different  was  the  France  on  which  he  had 
now  to  make  war.  Meantime  his  allies  were  be- 
ing beaten  in  battles,  which,  if  they  had  been 
won,  would  have  given  him  as  many  sugar  islands 
as  he  pleased ;  and  which,  being  lost,  swept 
away  the  sugar  islands  in  the  general  ruin.  When 
Bonaparte  and  the  best  army  of  France  were  in 
Egypt  and  off  the  board,  Pitt  took  advantage  of 
their  absence,  not  to  join  his  allies  in  dealing  a  de- 
cisive blow,  but  to  make  an  isolated  descent  on  the 
enemy's  country,  the  weakest  operation  in  propor- 
tion to  the  force  employed  which  can  be  under- 


Pitt.  271 

taken,  and  one  which  in  this  case  ended  in  igno- 
minious failure.  He  had  not  his  father's  eye  for 
men.  Chatham  would  have  brought  Nelson  to  the 
front  before.  When  Nelson  had  won  the  Nile, 
Pitt  only  gave  him  the  lowest  rank  in  the  peerage, 
and  said,  in  defense  of  this  parsimony  in  reward- 
ing merit,  that  Nelson  would  live  as  the  winner 
of  the  greatest  of  naval  victories,  and  that  no  one 
would  ask  whether  he  had  been  made  a  baron, 
a  viscount,  or  an  earl.  This,  when  the  highest 
rank  in  the  peerage  was  being  every  day  bestow- 
ed on  political  subserviency,  and  even  on  politi- 
cal corruption:  when  Sir  James  Lowther  was 
made  an  earl  direct  for  his  influence  at  Appleby. 
Pitt  is  open  to  a  worse  censure  than  that  of  mere- 
ly failing  to  distinguish  merit.  When  he  allowed 
himself  to  be  made  minister  by  an  unconstitution- 
al use  of  the  king's  personal  influence,  he  had  sold 
himself  to  the  fiend,  and  the  fiend  did  not  fail  to 
exact  the  bond.  Twice  Pitt  had  the  criminal 
weakness  to  gratify  the  king's  personal  wishes  by 
entrusting  the  safety  of  English  armies  and  the 
honor  of  England  to  the  incompetent  hands  of 
the  young  Duke  of  York.  This  absurd  prince- 
ling actually  objected  to  acting  under  the  com- 
mand of  Clarifait,  the  most  competent  and  emi- 
nent of  the  allied  generals :  and  to  gratify  his  con- 
ceit, the  command-in-chief  was  assumed  by  the 


272  Three  English  Statesmen. 

emperor  the  arcli-incompetency  of  all.  But  after 
all,  could  promotion  by  merit  be  expected  at  the 
hands  of  governments  whose  essence  was  privi- 
lege ?  It  was  against  promotion  by  merit  that 
they  were  fighting.  To  accept  promotion  by  mer- 
it would  have  been  to  accept  the  revolution. 

In  the  sixth  year  of  the  war,  the  nation  was 
brought  to  the  brink  of  destruction  by  a  mutiny 
in  the  fleet,  caused  entirely  by  the  vices  of  the 
administration.  The  pay  of  the  sailors  and  their 
pensions  had  not  been  increased  since  the  time  of 
Charles  II.,  in  spite  of  the  immense  rise  of  prices 
since  that  period,  which  must  have  been  felt  more 
than  ever  in  time  of  war.  This,  while  millions 
were  being  paid  to  borough-mongers  and  sinecur- 
ists,  and  when  Tomline  was  not  satisfied  unless 
he  had  a  rich  bishopric  and  a  rich  deanery  too. 
Light  weight  of  provisions  was  served,  a  sailor's 
pound  being  fourteen  ounces  instead  of  sixteen ; 
and  even  for  this  short  weight  the  sailors  were 
dependent  on  pursers  taken  from  a  low  class, 
who  cheated  them  without  limit.  The  distribu- 
tion of  prize-money  was  most  unfair ;  the  disci- 
pline most  vexatious ;  the  officers,  who  were  ap- 
pointed entirely  by  interest,  were  incompetent 
and  tyrannical ;  and  seamen  who  had  fought  the 
battles  of  the  country,  seamen  scarred  with  hon- 
orable wounds,  were  sworn  at  and  abused  like 


Pitt.  273 

dogs  by  insolent  and  worthless  boys.  At  last 
the  sailors  rose  and  respectfully  demanded  redress. 
The  government,  conscious  of  its  guilt,  was  com- 
pelled to  accede  to  their  demands,  and  even  to 
dismiss  a  number  of  officers  from  the  service. 
But  the  spirit  of  mutiny  once  roused,  naturally 
broke  forth  again  in  a  more  turbulent  and  dan- 
gerous form.  It  was  suppressed  at  last,  and  jus- 
tice of  course  was  done  on  the  principal  muti- 
neers, who  were  hanged  or  flogged  through  the 
fleet.  It  must  be  owned,  however,  that  even  in 
the  case  of  the  worst  offenders,  justice  was  tem- 
pered with  mercy,  for  no  lord  of  the  admiralty 
was  either  flogged  or  hanged.  Since  that  time, 
and  owing  originally  to  the  mutiny,  the  navy 
has  been  in  a  sounder  state.  Neither  that  nor 
any  service  will  be  in  a  perfectly  sound  state  till 
dismissal  is  the  highest  punishment.  And  now 
—Democracy  is  such  an  ungrateful  thing — can 
any  one  point  out  to  us  an  instance  in  histoiy, 
from  Athens  down  to  the  American  Republic,  in 
which  a  Democracy  treated  its  defenders  as  the 
British  seaman  was  treated  before  the  mutiny  at 
Spithead  ?  Democracy  does  not  build  Blenheims 
and  create  vast  estates  for  the  general  or  the  ad- 
miral ;  but  it  is  just,  and  it  can  not  help  being 
just,  to  the  soldier  and  the  sailor. 

What  Pitt's  war  finance  was,  taxpayers  need 
M2 


274         •      Three  English  Statesmen. 

not  to  be  told.  He  did  make  an  effort  to  keep 
borrowing  within  bounds,  but  it  soon  broke 
down,  and  he  plunged  headlong  into  an  abyss  of 
debt.  In  this  he  was  backed  by  a  Parliament  of 
the  rich  and  idle  trained  to  public  extravagance 
by  prodigality  at  home.  His  own  recklessness 
in  private  expenditure  is  too  well  known.  It  com- 
pelled him  to  accept  somewhat  ignominious  aid. 
This  system  of  laying  burdens  on  posterity  re- 
moves, as  I  have  said  before,  the  last  check  on 
war.  Nor  is  it  capable  of  moral  defense.  The 
theory  on  which  Pitt  and  his  supporters  acted — 
that  they  had  a  right  to  mortgage  the  estate  which 
they  bequeathed  to  posterity— assumed  that  the 
earth  belonged  to  one  generation  of  men.  The 
earth  does  not  belong  to  one  generation  of  men, 
but  to  God,  who  has  given  it  to  each  generation 
in  its  turn. 

Of  Pitt's  war  taxes  the  most  notable  were  the 
income  tax  and  the  succession  tax.  The  income 
tax  is  a  tax  which  ought  to  be  resorted  to  only 
in  time  of  war  or  in  some  national  emergency 
which  excites  the  national  spirit  as  much  as  war. 
It  is  only  when  the  national  spirit  is  so  excited 
that  there  is  a  chance  of  true  returns.  In  ordi- 
nary times  the  income  tax  is  a  tax  on  honesty,  a 
premium  on  dishonesty,  a  corrupter  of  national 
and  especially  of  commercial  honor.  Pitt  pro- 


Pitt.  275 

posed  a  succession  duty  on  real  and  personal 
property  alike ;  but  the  landlord  Parliament 
threw  out  the  duty  on  the  real  property,  and 
passed  that  on  personal  property  alone.  There 
are  no  Trades  Unions  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

Pitt  had  gone  into  the  war  reckoning  on  the 
failure  of  the  French  finances.  "While  French 
finance  was  recruited  by  despair,  he  was  driven 
to  a  suspension  of  cash  payments.  There  is  no 
great  mystery,  I  apprehend,  about  the  character 
and  effects  of  this  measure.  It  was,  in  fact,  a 
forced  loan,  which  was  paid  off,  at  the  expense  of 
great  national  suffering,  by  the  return  to  cash  pay- 
ments after  the  war.  Meantime  it  caused  a  depre- 
ciation of  the  currency,  which  bore  hard  on  fixed 
incomes,  while  it  did  not  affect  the  land-owners, 
whose  rents  could  be  raised. 

All  political  progress  was,  of  course,  suspended 
in  England,  as  it  was  over  Europe  generally,  in 
these  disastrous  years.  Pitt's  spe'eches  were  full 
of  clap-trap  against  democracy,  as  though  equali- 
ty were  responsible  for  the  political  calamities 
which  privilege  had  brought  on  in  France.  He 
now  openly  renounced  Parliamentary  Reform, 
and  began  to  declaim  in  the  full  Tory  strain 
against  following  false  luminaries  and  abandon- 
ing the  pole-star  of  the  British  constitution.  He 
and  his  party  maintained  that  the  rotten  borough 


276  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Parliament,  the  stench  of  whose  corruption  rose 
to  heaven,  which  was  wasting  the  blood  and  sub- 
stance of  the  people  in  a  class  war,  and  brutal- 
izing them  at  the  same  time,  had  been  found 
amply  sufficient  for  securing  their  happiness,  and 
that  the  system  ought  not  to  be  idly  and  wanton- 
ly disturbed,  from  any  love  of  experiment,  or 
predilection  for  theory.  It  would  be  very  wrong 
to  do  any  thing  wantonly  or  idly,  or  from  mere 
love  of  experiment,  or  predilection  for  theory. 
But  supposing  that  an  absurd  system  of  repre- 
sentation did  work  well,  not  only  for  those  who 
monopolize  power  and  patronage  under  it,  and 
who  of  course  find  it  practically  excellent,  but 
for  the  nation :  still  its  absurdity  would  be  an 
evil  calling  for  amendment,  because  institutions 
ought  to  command  the  reverence  of  the  people, 
which  they  can  not  do  unless  they  are  intelligi- 
ble and  consistent  with  reason.  And  if  theory 
is  nothing,  and  if  the  people  are  already  practi- 
cally represented,  where  is  the  great  danger  of 
bringing  the  theory  into  accordance  with  the 
practice !  Great  allowance  is  to  be  made  for  the 
Tory  Minister  in  this  matter:  but  had  he  been 
one  of  the  first  of  statesmen,  he  would  have  seen 
how  sure  an  antidote  against  disaffection  and 
foreign  contagion  was  to  be  found  in  timely  and 
moderate  Reform. 


Pitt.  277 

It  has  been  said  that  when  Pitt  had  once  gone 
into  the  war,  he  ought  to  have  made  it  a  crusade. 
Burke  complained  at  the  time  that  he  did  not : 
and  the  charge  has  been  repeated  with  great  am- 
plitude of  rhetoric  by  Lord  Macaulay.  If  Pitt  did 
not  actually  proclaim  a  crusade,  he  used  language 
about  the  salvation  of  Europe  wild  enough  to  satis- 
fy most  fanatics,  and  the  flagitious  nonsense  which 
he  did  not  talk  himself,  he  allowed  his  colleagues 
and  subordinates  to  talk  for  him.  So  far  as  he  re- 
strained himself  or  them,  he  is  to  be  praised,  as 
Lord  Stanhope  justly  says,  for  not  having  given 
the  war  a  character  which  would  have  made  it 
internecine.  But  as  to  a  crusade,  who  were  to  be 
the  crusaders  ?  Would  the  borough-mongers  and 
the  sinecurists  have  played  the  part  of  Tancred 
and  Godfrey  ?  Would  Tomline  and  Dr.  Cornwal- 
lis  have  gone  forth,  like  the  bishops  of  the  middle 
ages,  at  the  head  of  the  army  of  the  Cross  ?  Burke 
himself,  the  Peter  the  Hermit  of  this  crusade,  would 
he  have  left  Beaconfield  and  his  pension  to  share 
the  doom  of  those  whom  he  had  sent  forth  to  die? 
Save  the  Sepulchre !  Save  Gatton  and  Old  Sa- 
rum !  Save  the  Earldom  of  Lonsdale,  save  the 
Clerkship  of  the  Pells,  the  Wardenship  of  the 
Cinque  Ports,  the  Tellership  of  the  Exchequer,  the 
salaries  of  the  Six  Clerks,  and  the  Deputy  Chafe- 
wax  !  Save  the  Deanery  of  St.  Paul's  and  "  the 


278  Three  English  Statesmen. 

only  arrangement  which  can  offer  any  accommo- 
dation in  my  favor!"  Crusading  is  self-sacrifice. 
These  men  were  carrying  on  a  war  in  their  own 
interest,  with  armies  of  peasants  trepanned  by 
drink  and  the  recruiting  sergeant,  with  seamen 
levied  by  the  press-gang,  and  with  the  money  of 
future  generations.  They  had  not  self-sacrifice 
enough  even  to  suppress  for  the  moment  their 
own  petty  jealousies  and  interested  intrigues  for 
office  in  the  most  desperate  moments  of  the  strug- 
gle. The  ruling  class,  I  apprehend,  bore  little  of 
the  burden.  If  their  taxes  rose,  their  rents  and 
tithes  rose  also ;  and  they  shared  a  vast  mass  of 
patronage  besides.  .  The  great  merchants  who 
supported  the  war  were  in  like  manner  growing 
rich,  as  great  merchants  in  war  often  do,  at  the 
expense  of  their  less  opulent  rivals.  Burke  had 
described  them  on  a  former  occasion  as  snuffing 
with  delight  the  cadaverous  scent  of  lucre.  The 
crusading  spirit,  if  it  was  anywhere,  was  on  the 
side  of  the  French  youths,  who  went  forth  shoeless 
and  ragged,  without  pay,  with  nothing  but  bread 
and  gunpowder,  to  save  their  country  from  the 
Coalition,  and,  as  some  of  them  thought,  to  over- 
throw tyranny  of  body  and  soul,  and  open  a  new 
reign  of  justice  and  happiness  for  mankind.  When 
the  French  Revolution  had  turned  to  the  lust  of 
military  aggrandizement  embodied  in  Bonaparte, 


Pitt.  279 

the  crusading  spirit  passed  to  the  other  side,  and 
then  the  leaders  of  England  might  appeal  to  it 
not  in  vain. 

Pitt  did  not  know  why  he  had  gone  to  war, 
and  therefore  when  he  found  himself  abandoned 
by  most  of  his  allies,  the  rest  requiring  subsidies 
to  drag  them  into  the  field,  the  cause  of  Europe, 
as  it  was  called,  thus  renounced  by  Europe  itself, 
every  thing  going  ill,  and  no  prospect  of  amend- 
ment, he  did  not  know  how  or  on  what  terms  to 
makepeace.  This  is  called  his  firmness.  He  vague- 
ly represented  himself  as  fighting  for  security 
for  the  past  and  reparation  for  the  future,  and  his 
words  were  parrotted  by  his  party;  but  it  was 
not  stated  what  the  reparation  or  the  security 
was.  He  pretended  at  one  time  that  there  was 
no  government  in  France  with  which  a  treaty 
could  be  made.  There  was  always  a  government 
in  France,  even  during  the  Reign  of  Terror,  obey- 
ed by  the  nation  and  the  national  functionaries, 
and  with  which,  therefore,  a  treaty  might  have 
been  made.  It  signifies  nothing,  as  every  body 
would  now  admit,  how  polluted  the  origin  or 
character  of  a  foreign  government  may  be,  you 
must  treat  with  it  as  a  government.  If  its  origin 
and  character  are  polluted,  or  even  questionable, 
you  need  not,  and  if  you  are  jealous  of  the  honor 
of  your  country  and  your  own  you  will  not,  fling 


280  Three  English  Statesmen. 

England  into  its  arms,  or  eagerly  place  her  hand 
in  the  hand  which  has  been  held  up  to  heaven  in 
perjury  and  is  stained  with  innocent  blood.  But 
you  must  treat  all  governments  as  governments ; 
it  is  the  only  way  of  fixing  responsibility  where 
circumstances  not  under  your  control  have  fixed 
power. 

Pitt,  however,  finding  disasters  thickening,  did 
struggle  to  make  peace.  He  underwent  great  hu- 
miliations to  obtain  it.  His  envoys  waited,  with 
a  submissiveness  and  a  patience  which  must  call 
a  blush  to  every  English  cheek,  in  the  antecham- 
bers of  the  insolent  and  domineering  Directory. 
He  even  offered  to  pay  two  of  the  Directors  the 
heavy  bribe  which  they  demanded.  England 
trying  to  bribe  two  sharpers  to  vouchsafe  her  a 
peace !  But  the  profligate  lust  of  aggrandizement 
which  had  now  taken  the  place  of  defensive 
objects  in  the  councils  of  the  French  Government, 
the  insufferable  temper  of  its  chiefs,  the  divisions 
in  the  Directory  between  the  Jacobins  and  the 
party  of  Reaction,  and  at  the  same  time  the  divis- 
ions in  the  English  cabinet  between  Pitt,  who  was 
for  peace,  and  Grenville,  who  was  still  for  war, 
prolonged  the  bloodshed  and  the  misery  for  eight 
years.  At  last,  in  1801,  peace,  and  an  ignomini- 
ous peace,  was  inevitable.  Pitt  has  been  suspect- 
ed of  having  slipped  out  of  office  and  put  Adding- 


Pitt.  281 

ton  in  to  eat  the  dirt,  meaning  himself  to  return 
to  power  when  the  dirt  had  been  eaten.  There 
seems  to  be  no  ground  for  the  suspicion,  though 
Pitt's  conduct  at  this  juncture  is  not  easy  to  under- 
stand. The  ostensible  cause  of  Pitt's  retirement 
was  the  king's  refusal  to  allow  him  to  redeem  the 
pledge  which  he  had  given  to  the  Catholics  at  the 
time  of  the  Irish  Union.  Not  only  was  his  honor 
involved,  but  it  was  of  vital  importance  to  the 
nation,  engaged  in  a  desperate  struggle,  that  the 
estrangement  of  the  Irish,  from  whom  a  large  pro- 
portion of  our  soldiers  were  drawn,  should  be 
brought  to  an  end.  But  the  king  had  a  con- 
science. Pitt  resigned,  putting  in  his  friend  and 
creature,  Addington,  merely,  as  I  am  convinced,  to 
keep  his  place  for  him  till  the  Catholic  difficulty 
could  be  solved.  "  Mr.  Pitt,"  said  Sir  James  Gra- 
ham, speaking  of  the  Catholic  Emancipation,  "  was 
prepared  to  do  the  right  thing  at  the  right  mo- 
ment; but  genuis  gave  way  to  madness,  and  two 
generations  have  deplored  the  loss  of  an  oppor- 
tunity which  never  will  return."  Genius  gave  way 
to  madness,  but  to  madness  practiced  upon  by 
genius  of  another  kind.  The  chief  performer  was 
Lord  Loughborough,  of  whom  when  he  died  His 
Majesty  was  pleased  to  say  (having  first  assured 
himself  that  the  melancholy  news  was  true)  "  that 
a  greater  rogue  was  not  left  in  his  dominions." 


282  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Loughborough's  coadjutor  was  Auckland,  after- 
ward spurned  as  a  knavish  intriguer  both  by  Pitt 
and  by  the  king.  Their  instruments  in  tampering 
with  the  conscience  of  the  half-insane  king  were 
Moore,  Archbishop  of  Canter buiy,  the  odor  of 
whose  nepotism  has  reached  the  nostrils  even  of 
our  generation,  and  the  Primate  of  Ireland,  who 
was  called  in  as  a  wolf  to  decide  this  question  of 
conscience  as  to  the  claims  of  the  sheep.  There 
is  scarcely  a  worse  intrigue  in  history. 

And  now  came  a  strange  turn  of  affairs. 
Scarcely  was  Pitt  out  and  Addington  in,  when 
Pitt  sent  the  king  a  promise  never  to  moot  the 
question  of  Catholic  Emancipation  again  during 
his  life.  Not  only  so,  but  he  undertook,  in  case 
any  one  else  should  moot  the  question,  to  find  the 
means  of  setting  it  aside.  The  reason  alleged  for 
this  strange  sacrifice  of  a  pledge  and  a  principle, 
was  that  the  agitation  of  the  king's  mind  on  the 
subject  had  brought  on  a  recurrence  of  his  illness. 
If  this  was  true,  we  may  remark,  in  the  first  place, 
that  here  is  another  warning  to  nations  in  search 
of  a  constitution  ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  that  if 
the  state  of  the  king's  mind  was  such  that  he 
could  not  consider  a  State  question  of  the  most 
vital  and  pressing  importance  without  bringing 
on  derangement,  he  was  physically  unfit  for  the 
duties  of  his  office,  and  he  ought  to  have  given 


Pitt.  283 

place  to  a  Regent.  Lord  Stanhope  urges  the 
claim  of  his  Majesty's  conscience  to  loyal  forbear- 
ance, but  perhaps  he  does  not  sufficiently  consid- 
er, on  the  other  hand,  the  claim  of  the  nation  to 
existence.  The  doctrine  that  one  man  ought  to 
die  for  the  people  has  been  propounded,  though 
not  by  auspicious  lips ;  but  no  one  has  yet  pro- 
pounded the  doctrine  that  the  people  ought  to 
die  for  one  man.  Not  only  George  III.,  but  his 
highly  conscientious  son  and  successor,  had  scru- 
ples about  Catholic  Emancipation  and  the  coro- 
nation oath :  and  George  the  Fourth's  successor 
might  have  had  the  same.  This  is  not  constitu- 
tional government.  What  great  measure  of  re- 
form would  ever  have  been  carried,  if  it  had  re- 
quired the  free  personal  assent  of  the  sovereign 
and  the  majority  of  the  House  of  Lords  ?  George 
III.  was  against  the  abolition  of  the  slave-trade. 
Were  the  horrors  of  the  middle  passage  to  go  6n 
while  he  lived?  But  the  fact  is,  his  conscience 
was  not  a  God-made  conscience,  it  was  a  bishop- 
made  and  chancellor-made  conscience ;  and  it  had 
not  the  firmness  any  more  than  the  purity  of  the 
God-made.  It  would  have  given  way  under  vig- 
orous pressure,  as  it  always  did.  He  had  ordered 
his  yacht  for  Hanover  more  than  once;  but  he 
countermanded  it  when  people  were  firm. 

One  thing,  at  all  events,  ought  to  have  been 


284  Three  English  Statesmen. 

done.  The  secret  intriguers  against  justice  and 
the  safety  of  the  nation  ought  to  have  been  drag- 
ged into  the  light  of  day,  and  made  personally 
responsible  for  the  advice  which  they  had  given 
the  king.  But  how  could  Pitt  do  this — he  who 
had  allowed  himself  to  be  made  prime  minister 
by  the  secret  and  equally  infamous  intrigue  be- 
tween the  king  and  Temple  ?  The  fiend  always 
claims  his  bond. 

The  situation,  however,  was  now  absurd.  Pitt 
was  out,  though  by  his  abandonment  of  the  Cath- 
olic cause  the  sole  ostensible  ground  of  his  retire- 
ment had  been  removed:  Addington  was  in, 
equally  without  reason.  Of  course  Pitt's  friends 
wished  at  once  to  take  out  the  warming-pan  and 
put  back  the  man.  But  to  do  this  was  now  not 
easy.  The  warming-pan  did  not  know  that  it 
was  a  warming-pan.  It  had  been  told  by  Pitt 
when  he  put  it  in  that  it  was  the  man  of  the  cri- 
sis. It  took  the  flatterer  at  his  word.  It  grew 
settled  and  self-satisfied  in  place.  The  king,  who 
had  revered  the  august  Pitt,  was  attracted  with 
magnetic  force  to  the  comfortable  mediocrity  of 
Addington.  He  addressed  him  in  the  most  affec- 
tionate terms — "  The  king  can  not  find  words  suf- 
ficiently expressive  of  his  Majesty's  cordial  appro- 
bation of  the  whole  arrangements  which  Jiis  own 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  has  wisely,  and  His 


Pitt.  285 

Majesty  chooses  to  add  most  correctly,  recom- 
mended." Pitt  himself,  though  clearly  conscious 
of  the  disarrangement,  was,  for  a  long  time,  for- 
bearing: he  had  enough  to  rest  on:  but  his 
younger  friends  were  more  impatient.  Canning 
lampooned  Addington,  who  had  a  brother  named 
Hiley,  and  a  brother-in-law  named  Bragge : 

"When  the  faltering  periods  lag, 

When  the  House  receives  them  dryly, 
Cheer,  oh,  cheer  him,  Brother  Bragge, 
Cheer,  oh,  cheer  him,  Brother  Hiley. " 

And  again,  when  the  Thames  was  being  forti- 
fied with  block-houses: 

"If  blocks  can  from  danger  deliver, 

Two  places  are  safe  from  the  French, 
The  one  is  the  mouth  of  the  river, 
The  other  the  treasury  bench." 

The  same  active  and  ingenious  spirit  proposed 
to  present  to  Addington  a  round-robin,  telling 
him  how  much  every  body  wished  him  to  resign ; 
and  as  there  was  a  difficulty  in  getting  the  best 
signatures,  Canning  suggested  that  the  round- 
robin  should  be  sent  in  without  signatures,  and 
that  Addington  should  be  told  that  he  could 
have  the  signatures  if  he  liked.  It  was  proposed 
that  Addington,  as  being  Speaker  was  his  spe- 
cialty, should  be  made  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Lords;  they  would  have  made  him  Speaker  of 


286  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Elysium  if  that  place  had  been  vacant.  For 
three  years  all  the  world  was  out  of  joint,  and  every 
body  was  in  perplexity.  Mr.  Wilberforce  wrote 
in  his  diary :  "  I  am  out  of  spirits,  and  doubtful 
about  the  path  of  duty  in  these  political  battles. 
I  can  not  help  regretting  that  Addington's  tem- 
perance and  conciliation  should  not  be  connected 
with  more  vigor."  And  then  he  puts  up  a  pray- 
er to  Heaven  for  guidance.  Heaven,  I  suspect, 
left  these  politicans  pretty  much  to  themselves. 

At  last  necessity,  which  will  have  the  man  and 
not  the  warming-pan,  came  in  the  shape  of  the 
renewal  of  the  war  with  a  danger  of  invasion. 
A  little  subterranean  work  was  done  by  the  Lord 
Chancellor  Eldon,  and  Addington  found  himself 
and  his  friends  gently  lifted  out  of  place,  and 
Pitt  quietly  installed  in  their  room,  Eldon  remain- 
ing chancellor  in  the  new  administration.  Lord 
Eldon's  conduct  in  this  matter,  of  which  many 
hard  things  have  been  said,  has  been  a  good  deal 
cleared  by  Lord  Stanhope.  Addington,  it  ap- 
pears, authorized  the  chancellor  to  open  negotia- 
tions, and  all  that  can  be  said  is,  that  he  was  not 
kept  informed  of  their  progress,  and  was  by  no 
means  gratified  at  their  result.  Eldon  thought 
himself  above  the  rules.  He  was  the  king's  own 
chancellor,  not  a  mere  member  of  ephemeral 
administrations.  Had  not  the  king,  when  the 


Pitt.  287 

chancellor  was  appointed,  buttoned  up  the  great 
seal  in  the  breast  of  his  coat,  and  taking  it  out 
said — "  I  give  it  you  from  my  heart  ?"  However, 
after  the  light  thrown  upon  the  transaction  by 
Lord  Stanhope,  we  are  happy  to  acquiesce  in  His 
Majesty's  intimation  to  "his  excellent  lord  chan- 
cellor," that  "  the  uprightness  of  Lord  Eldon's 
mind,  and  his  attachment  to  the  king,  have  borne 
him  with  credit  and  honor,  and  (what  the  king 
knows  will  not  be  without  its  due  weight)  with 
the  approbation  of  his  sovereign,  through  an  un- 
pleasant labyrinth."  The  last  two  words  at  all 
events  are  true. 

Pitt  came  in  to  conduct  a  war,  and  this  time 
a  necessary  war ;  for  I  am  convinced  that  with 
the  perfidy  and  rapine  of  Bonaparte  no  peace 
could  be  made,  that  the  struggle  with  him  was  a 
struggle  for  the  independence  of  all  nations 
against  the  armed  and  disciplined  hordes  of  a 
conqueror  as  cruel  and  as  barbarous  as  Attila. 
The  outward  mask  of  civilization  Bonaparte  wore, 
and  he  could  use  political  and  social  ideas  for  the 
purposes  of  his  ambition  as  dexterously  as  can- 
non ;  but  in  character  he  was  a  Corsican  and  as 
savage  as  any  bandit  of  his  isle.  If  utter  selfish- 
ness, if  the  reckless  sacrifice  of  humanity  to  your 
own  interest  and  passions  be  vileness,  history  has 
no  viler  name.  I  can  look  with  pride  upon  the 


288  Three  English  Statesmen. 

fortitude  and  constancy  which  England  displayed 
in  the  contest  with  the  universal  tyrant.  The 
position  in  which  it  left  her  at  its  close  was  fair- 
ly won :  though  she  must  now  be  content  to  re- 
tire from  this  temporary  supremacy,  and  fall  back 
into  her  place  as  one  of  the  community  of  nations. 
But  Pitt  was  still  destined  to  fail  as  a  war  minis- 
ter ;  and  Trafalgar  was  soon  cancelled  by  Auster- 
litz.  "  How  I  leave  my  country !"  Such,  it  seems, 
is  the  correct  version  of  Pitt's  last  words.  Those 
words  are  perhaps  his  truest  epitaph.  They  ex- 
press the  anguish  of  a  patriot  who  had  wrecked 
his  country. 


APPENDIX. 


N 


APPENDIX. 


THE  ANCIENT  FREEHOLDERS  OF 
ENGLAND. 

THE  number  of  the  Buckinghamshire  freeholders  who 
brought  up  the  petition  in  favor  of  Hampden,  and  to  whom 
reference  is  made  in  the  lecture  on  Pym,  was  variously 
estimated  at  the  time ;  by  themselves  it  was  placed  as 
high  as  six  thousand,  by  their  enemies  as  low  as  two  thou- 
sand. (See  Mr.  Forster's  "  Arrest  of  the  Five  Members," 
p.  353,  note.)  Rush  worth  (iv.  p.  487)  says: — "This  day 
divers  knights,  gentlemen,  and  freeholders  of  the  County 
of  Bucks,  to  the  number  of  about  four  thousand  (as  they 
were  computed),  came  to  London,  riding  every  one  with 
a  printed  copy  of  the  Protestation  lately  taken  in  his  hat." 
Clarendon  says  : — "  As  soon  as  the  citizens  and  mariners 
were  discharged,  some  Buckinghamshire  men,  who  were 
said  to  be  at  the  door  with  a  petition,  and  had,  indeed, 
waited  upon  the  triumph  with  a  train  of  several  thousand 
men,  were  called  in ;  who  delivered  their  petition  in  the 
name  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  County  of  Buckingham, 
and  said  it  was  brought  to  the  town  by  about  six  thou- 
sand men." 

In  "  Whitelocke's  Memorials"  (vol.  iv.  p.  272)  there  is 


292  Appendix. 

an  entry  respecting  the  writer's  election  as  a  knight  of  the 
shire  for  Buckingham,  which  throws  some  light  on  the 
number  of  the  freeholders.  "  At  the  election  of  the  knights 
of  the  shire  for  Bucks,  my  friends  marched  into  Bucks  one 
thousand  horse,  and  were  in  the  field  above  three  thousand, 
so  that  I  was  first  and  unanimously  elected,  and  with  me 
Colonel  Ingoldsby,  Sir  Richard  Piggott,  Mr.  Hambden 
(the  son  of  the  great  man),  and  Mr.  Granville."  This  was 
under  Cromwell's  Reform  Act,  embodied  in  the  Instrument 
of  Government,  which  gave  votes  for  counties  not  only  to 
freeholders,  but  to  all  persons  holding  property,  by  what- 
ever tenure,  to  the  value  of  £200  ;  so  that  probably  many 
leaseholders  and  copyholders  took  part  in  the  election. 
On  the  other  hand,  those  who  had  fought  for  the  king 

*  o  o 

since,  the  commencement  of  the  troubles  were  disabled  from 
voting  ;  and  in  the  divided  state  of  the  other  party,  conse- 
quent on  the  quarrel  between  the  Presbyterians  and  Inde- 
pendents, it  is  not  likely  that  all  the  electors  who  remained 
qualified  would  come  forward  to  vote  for  a  man  connected 
as  Whitelocke  was  with  the  Protector.  Not  a  few  of  the 
wives  of  the  freeholders  who  rode  up  to  London  to  support 
Hampden  must  have  been  widows.  "VVhitelocke's  words 
seem  to  imply  that  the  other  candidates  had  their  special 
cavalcades  of  adherents  as  well  as  himself,  though  they 
may  have  been  less  numerous  than  his  own.  "We  may  feel 
pretty  sure,  from  the  habits  of  life  prevalent  at  that  tune, 
that  the  bulk  of  these  electors  were  really  Buckingham- 
shire men  resident  on  the  holdings  which  formed  their 
electoral  qualifications. 

^Vhitelocke  gives  this  account  of  the  Ironsides : — "  Crom- 
well had  a  brave  regiment  of  horse  of  his  countrymen, 
most  of  them  freeholders  and  freeholder's  sons,  and  who  up- 
on matter  of  conscience  engaged  in  this  quarrel.  And  thus, 


Appendix.  293 

being  well  armed  within  by  the  satisfaction  of  their  own 
consciences,  and  without  by  good  iron  arms,  they  would 
as  one  man  stand  firmly  and  fight  desperately." 

M.  Guizot,  in  his  "  History  of  the  English  Revolution," 
notices  the  subdivision  of  land  and  the  increase  of  the 
different  classes  of  resident  proprietors  as  characteristic 
of  the  period  of  Charles  I.,  ascribing  them,  in  part,  to  the 
breaking  up  of  the  great  Church  estates,  which  had  been 
granted  to  courtiers,  by  whose  prodigality  they  were  dis- 
persed, and  .to  the  sale  of  crown  lands  enforced  by  the 
fiscal  necessities  of  the  crown. 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  in  the  seventeeth  cen- 
tury, and  even  at  a  later  period,  England  contained  a  much 
larger  number  than  at  present  of  yeomen  freeholders  sub- 
sisting by  the  cultivation  of  their  own  land.  The  char- 
acter of  these  men  appears  to  be  very  distinctly  marked 
upon  the  history  of  our  revolution.  They  are  the  heart 
and  the  sinews  of  the  Puritan  cause.  In  ordinary  times 
they  accept  the  leadership  of  the  higher  gentry,  as  the 
lists  of  Parliament  show:  but  they  have  independent 
opinions  of  their  own :  it  is  upon  matter  of  conscience  that 
they  engage  in  the  quarrel ;  and  when  the  aristocracy 
desert  the  cause  they  stand  firm  to  it,  adhere  to  a  leader 
of  their  own  class,  and  bear  him  on  to  victory.  An  inde- 
pendent yeomanry  has  left  a  similar  mark  in  the  history  of 
other  countries,  where  that  class  has  borne  the  brunt  of 
patriotic  or  religious  struggles,  and  most  recently  and 
signally  in  the  history  of  the  United  States,  where  the 
yeomen,  especially  those  of  the  west,  were,  throughout 
the  late  struggle  with  the  slave-owners,  the  unshaken  pil- 
lars of  the  Republic.  The  farmer,  though  less  active- 
minded,  of  course,  than  the  trader  or  the  artisan,  is,  as  a 
general  rule,  more  meditative,  has  more  depth  of  character, 


294  Appendix. 

and,  when  a  principle  comes  home  to  him,  grasps  it  more 
firmly.  But  to  make  his  spirit  independent,  he  should  be 
the  owner  of  his  own  land. 

The  remnant  of  these  yeomen  still  lingers,  under  the 
name  of  "  statesmen,"  in  Cumberland  and  Westmoreland, 
where  they  formed,  in  the  language  of  Wordsworth, "  a  per- 
fect republic  of  shepherds  and  agriculturists,  proprietors  for 
the  most  part  of  the  land  which  they  occupied  and  cultiva- 
ted." But  from  the  rest  of  England  they  have  either  alto- 
gether disappeared,  or  are  very  rapidly  disappearing.  Such, 
at  least,  is  the  conviction  of  all  whom  I  have  been  able  to 
consult,  whether  general  economists  or  persons  of  local 
knowledge  and  experience.  We  have,  unfortunately,  no 
published  statistics,  of  a  trustworthy  kind,  as  to  the  proprie- 
torship of  land,  and  the  changes  which  it  has  been  under- 
going. 

Mr.  Disraeli,  indeed,  in  the  speech  in  which  he  attacked 
the  passage  in  the  text,  boasted  that  there  were  still  four 
thousand  freeholders  upon  the  electoral  register  of  Bucks, 
and  he  implied  that  these  were  freeholders  of  the  old  yeomen 
class,  part  of  "  the  backbone  of  the  country."  There  are 
not  only  four  thousand  freeholders  on  the  register,  but  four 
thousand  five  hundred,  the  number  having  recently  increased. 
But  an  inspection  of  the  register  at  once  indicates  and  local 
inquiry  decisively  confirms  the  indication,  that,  for  the  most 
part,  these  are  not  freeholders  of  the  old  yeoman  kind.  Of 
the  4500,  2100  only  are  at  once  occupiers  and  owners  ;  and 
of  the  holdings  of  these  2100,  more  than  half  are  at  an  esti- 
mated rental  of  less  than  £14.  The  holdings  of  a  large 
proportion  are  hi  towns,  as  Mr.  Disraeli  himself  is  always 
complaining,  and  belong  to  a  class  of  electoral  nuisance 
which  he  is  always  scheming  to  clear  away  from  the  fair  face 
of  the  rural  creation.  The  descriptions  of  the  properties  in 


Appendix.  295 

the  electoral  register  are  not  precise,  but  when  inspected, 
and  compared  with  the  electors'  places  of  abode,  it  will  be 
found  that  they  are  seldom  suggestive  of  a  freehold  farm 
cultivated  by  a  resident  owner.* 


*  In  speaking  of  this  question  at  Guildford,  I  took  as  a  specimen  the 
electoral  register  of  the  parish  of  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  Bucks,  not  because 
I  had  or  pretended  to  have  any  local  information  as  to  that  parish,  hut  as 
I  stated  at  the  time,  because  it  happened  to  be  the  first  rural  parish  in 
the  register  of  the  county.  I  believe  I  gave  the  analysis  correctly.  But 
there  appears  to  be  some  discrepancy,  not  only  between  the  electoral  register 
and  the  actual  list  of  land-holders  in  the  parish,  some  of  whom  are  females, 
or  register  their  votes  in  other  parishes,  but  between  the  impressions  of 
local  informants  as  to  the  character  of  some  of  the  holdings  and  their 
occupants.  The  rector,  who  challenged  my  statement  in  a  published  letter, 
makes  10,  and  according  to  a  list  with  which  he  has  since  favored  me, 
even  13  "homesteads,"  while  another  informant  thinks  that  the  designation 
of  "yeoman  subsisting  by  the  cultivation  of  his  own  land  "  can  be  properly 
applied  to  only  two  holders,  whose  farms  together  comprise  but  82  acres  out 
of  a  total  acreage  of  3550.  The  last-mentioned  informant  also  states, 
and  is  supported  by  other  persons  acquainted  with  the  district  in  the 
statement,  that  the  class  of  freeholders  which  existed  in  Hampden's  days 
is  quietly  disappearing  from  that  part  of  the  country.  It  is  useless,  how- 
ever, to  carry  on  a  discussion  respecting  a  single  disputed  instance,  when 
the  general  fact  is  undisputed.  I  only  wish  to  remark  that  my  assertions 
were  not  ' '  random  :"  they  were  an  account  of  a  document  before  me,  to 
which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  appealed. 

In  the  same  speech  (or,  as  I  should  rather  call  it,  epilogue  to  my 
lecture)  I  alluded,  in  passing,  to  the  connection  of  Milton  with  Chalfont 
St.  Giles.  My  words  I  believe  were,  "  There  Milton  found  a  refuge,  at 
the  time  when  Mr.  Disraeli's  party  was  in  the  ascendant."  This  seems  to 
have  been  turned,  in  an  abridged  report,  into  "  Thither  Milton  fled  from 
the  Tory  mercies  of  the  Kestoration. "  The  rector  thereupon  reminded 
me  with  some  asperity  that  Milton  had  left  London  to  avoid  the  plague, 
and  that  he  was  secured  against  personal  danger  by  the  Act  of  Indemnity. 
Milton  left  London  to  avoid  the  plague ;  but  he  came  to  Chalfont,  I  appre- 
hend, because  in  that  district  theHampden  and  Cromwell  connection  was 
very  strong,  and  he  would  there  be  safe  from  annoyances  against  which 
no  Act  of  Indemnity  could  secure  him.  (See  Murray's  Handbook  for 
Bucks,  under  Amersham.')  My  real  words  imported  no  more.  Milton, 


296  Appendix. 

The  change  is  due,  no  doubt,  mainly  to  economical  causes 
independent  of  legislation.  Wealth  has  of  late  years 
accumulated  to  an  immense  -extent  in  commercial  hands, 
and  the  first  ambition  of  its  possessors  generally  is  to  invest 
it  in  land.  Prices  are  thus  offered  for  land  which  the 
smaller  holders  can  not  resist.  The  high  prices  of  the 
French  war  led  land-owners  into  extravagance  which,  when 
peace  and  the  fall  of  prices  arrived,  probably  compelled  the 
sale  of  many  a  yeoman's  or  small  gentleman's  estate.  The 
habits  of  the  farmer  class  generally,  and  of  their  families, 
have  become  more  luxurious  and  expensive,  and  the  prod- 
uce of  a  small  holding  has  not  sufficed  for  their  desires. 
Money  has  also  been  borrowed  for  improvements,  and  the 
land  has  gone  in  the  end  to  pay  the  debt.  The  running 
out  of  the  leases  on  the  Church  and  College  estates  has 
converted  a  considerable  number  of  holdings  which  were 
practically  almost  freeholds  into  tenancies  at  will. 

It  seems  impossible,  however,  that  entails,  or  to  speak 
more  accurately  family  settlements,  and  the  law  of  pri- 
mogeniture in  succession  to  intestates,  which  though  seldom 
operative  itself,  leads  the  custom,  should  not  greatly  con- 
tribute to  prevent  the  subdivision  of  land.  Cases  have 
been  mentioned  to  me  in  which  a  subdivision  has  evidently 
followed  upon  the  disentailment  of  a  great  estate,  among 
others  that  of  the  great  Buckingham  estate,  the  disentail- 
ment of  which,  as  I  am  informed,  has  brought  into  existence 
a  considerable  number  of  smaller  proprietors.* 

however,  did  not  feel  himself  quite  so  safe  as  the  Hector  of  Chalfont 

thinks. 

"On  evil  days  though  fallen  and  evil  tongues  ; 
In  darkness,  and  with  dangers  compassed  round 
And  solitude." 

*  I  have  been  understood  as  saying  that  Jive  hundred  freeholders  have 
been  called  into  existence  by  the  breaking  up  of  the  Buckingham  estates. 
But  this  is  a  mistake.  What  I  said  was,  that  five  hundred  had  been 


Appendix.  297 

I  shall  not  attempt  here  to  enter  into  the  economical 
part  of  the  question.  All  the  ordinary  laws  of  human 
nature  must  be  reversed  with  regard  to  this  subject,  if 
security  of  tenure  is  not  conducive  to  the  progress  of 
agriculture,  provided  that  the  holder  has  wherewithal  to 
improve  the  land.  It  can  scarcely  be  thought  possible 
that  land,  if  it  continues  to  bear  any  thing  like  its 
present  price,  can  pass  to  any  considerable  extent  into  the 
hands  of  peasant  proprietors :  but  if  thrown  into  a  free 
market,  it  might  pass  to  some  extent  into  the  hands  of 
smaller  holders  subsisting  by  agriculture,  and  from  whom 
active  and  successful  fanning  might  be  expected. 

In  a  political  point  of  view,  the  country  has  reason  to 
lament  the  loss  of  a  worthy  and  independent  class  of  citi- 
zens. The  most  independent  class  now  are  the  skilled 
artisans ;  but  the  skilled  artisans,  with  all  their  intelligence, 
have  not  the  political  any  more  than  they  have  the  physi- 
cal robustness  of  the  yeoman  :  and  moreover  they  are  not, 
like  the  yeoman,  a  military  power. 

In  a  social  point  of  view  the  absence  of  so  many  of  the 
great  proprietors  from  their  estates,  either  wholly  or  dur- 
ing the  London  season,  and  the  immense  interval  between 
them  and  the  mass  of  the  laboring  population,  are  great 
drawbacks  from  the  civilizing  influence  which  they  are 
supposed  to  exercise.  It  is  open  to  inquiry,  at  all  events, 
whether  a  body  of  proprietors,  tolerably  educated,  always 
resident  and  always  in  immediate  contact  with  the  laborer, 
might  not  be  a  benefical  supplement  to  the  squire  and  the 
tenant-farmer,  the  squire  pressing  the  tenant,  the  tenant 
pressing  those  beneath  him. 

added  to  the  number  of  the  Buckinghamshire  freeholders  on  the  electoral 
register,  and  that  the  recent  increase,  as  I  was  informed,  was  partly  caused 
by  the  breaking  up  of  the  Buckingham  estate. 

N2 


298 


Appendix. 


Let  artificial  restrictions,  such  as  the  unnatural  privilege 
.of  tying  up  land  to  persons  not  in  being,  be  removed ;  let 
land  be  brought  freely  into  the  market ;  and  all  induce- 
ments and  influences  will,  in  the  course  of  nature,  have 
their  just  weight  and  find  their  proper  level.  Such,  in 
every  point  of  view,  is  the  dictate  of  the  general  good, 
whatever  the  desire  of  maintaining  a  territorial  aristocracy 
for  political  purposes  may  have  to  say  upon  the  other  side. 


